The new Proton Authenticator app does a few things others don’t

Authenticator apps are a great way to help keep your accounts secure, but some of them come with annoying trade-offs. That could be ads, missing features, or making it hard to switch to another platform. Proton is trying to clean all that up with its own new 2FA app, called Proton Authenticator.

The app just launched on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux, and it brings most of the stuff you’d expect, like time-based 2FA codes, offline support, and the ability to protect your tokens with a PIN or biometrics. But there’s also a bit more going on in the background.

Proton says you can sync your 2FA codes across devices with end-to-end encryption, or keep everything local if you don’t want anything backed up. Importing existing codes from other apps is easy, and unlike some competitors, you can export them again later. That alone could save you a headache if you’ve ever tried switching 2FA apps and found yourself redoing everything by hand.

The app works whether or not you use a Proton account, though you’ll need one if you want to sync across devices. Anyone already using Proton Pass might not need this new app at all, as that has 2FA built in. But if you like keeping your codes separate, this gives you a more secure option.

Like the rest of Proton’s tools, Authenticator is open source and free to use. It’s not doing anything wildly new, but it does fix a bunch of common pain points in a pretty clean package.