Twilio Desktop App

[Jacinda Saleeby]

Authyis an application used to set up two-factor authentication. The app generates a code every 30 seconds, which can then be used to sign into a linked account. While vendors such as Microsoft and Google have authenticator apps of their own, Authy Desktop allows users to sign into services without having to squint at their phones.

Twilio acquired Authy in 2015, but has suffered turbulent times in recent years. In 2022, an attacker broke into several of the developer's customer accounts after phishing its employees, and last month it announced that Twilio's CEO, Jeff Lawson, was departing "with immediate effect."

The announcement in January that Authy Desktop was going to be terminated in August was met with disappointment from users, and this unhappiness intensified when the end of life date was shifted to March. One user described the decision as "beyond absurd," while another opined: "This is an excellent way to piss off thousands of developers and make sure we never touch any of your products again. A masterful gambit."

Twilio suggested some alternatives for users who wish to stick with the desktop version. It also admitted that, since the Authy app lacks an export feature, getting up and running in another application would require re-enabling the 2FA method and re-adding the token in the new application.

In January, when Twilio first announced it was to ax the Authy Desktop applications, it declared: "We made this difficult decision to sunset the Twilio Authy desktop apps in order to streamline our focus, and provide more value on existing product solutions."

Now I'm unsure of the underlying reason why this did not work, but it seems that pip3 does not encompass all versions of python 3.x? Usingpip3 list andpip3.8 list I noticed I had the twilio module for pip3 but not for pip 3.8.

I think your pip is not configured properly . You may be getting succefuuly installed message but it is not install where it should be. try pip install --user i am sure it will work for you. pip install may work fine only in virtualenvironment without any config.Try pip install --user package name

Twilio, the maker of two-factor authentication app Authy, will be discontinuing its native desktop apps for all platforms in August, forcing users to switch over to its mobile version -- but Mac users have a work-around.

Two-factor authentication apps that can work with multiple services are an essential part of online life, but one will be limiting the options of its users. Twilio, the company behind Authy, says it will be streamlining its focus to its mobile apps, at the expense of its desktop versions.

In a support document first reported by Bleeping Computer, the End of Life for Authy for Desktop is set for August 2024. This includes the desktop apps for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

"We made this difficult decision to sunset the Twilio Authy desktop apps in order to streamline our focus and provide more value on existing product solutions for which we see increasing demand," the page states.

Instead, Authy users are recommended to switch to its mobile apps, including its iOS version. Though the macOS app won't be usable from August, the page does add that the iOS app will still be downloadable and work on Apple Silicon Macs.

For users who want to shift to other apps, Twilio warns that the Authy app doesn't have an export feature, so users will have to disable then re-enable 2FA and re-add the token to their new application. However, it is advised that users do not delete their tokens stored on Authy before setting up their new app, due to the chance of being locked out of accounts.

If users switch to the mobile edition, they can take advantage of the Authy backup feature to automatically synchronize tokens between apps.

The sunsetting of apps is announced on the same day as co-founder Jeff Lawson steps down from the role of CEO and from the Twilio Board of Directors. He is replaced by Jeff Epstein as Chair, and Khozema Shipchandler as CEO.

Read on AppleInsider

In my last post we looked at how to create a very minimal Slack clone with Twilio, ElectronJS and Angular 5. Although I used Electron to give the app the ability to run as a standalone app, I didn't really use too many features inherent to Electron so I thought it would be a good idea to continue building on this application as an exercise to learn more about the entire stack that I chose to build the application with.

So in this post, we'll take a look at adding support for desktop notifications. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure how much this particular feature counts as an Electron feature since most modern browsers support notifications, but that's OK, it was still a good exercise for myself since I haven't really worked with them much until now.

As it turns out, notifications aren't very complicated. I decided to wrap some logic around the notifications without over complicating them, so I decided on the following criteria for displaying them:

The first thing we do in the notifyMessage() function is check our "early escape" clause. If the message being passed was authored by the current user, or the boolean showDesktopNotification flag is false, we bail out right away. Moving forward though, we declare on object containing the title and the message body we want to use to craft the notification and we use that to pass it to the Notification class. Note, we don't have to call a show() method at this point - just declaring the class is enough to trigger the notification at this point. We could have also included an icon if we wanted to display a nice custom application specific icon. Finally, we add a click listener and restore the window if it is minimized. This is where I ran into a bit of trouble developing on Debian 9 - it seems that the click event is not dispatched (at least not in KDE) so I was never able to confirm the restore functionality on Linux, but I tested it on a Mac running High Sierra and confirmed that the window was properly restored.

Oh, I should also mention how the showDesktopNotification flag gets set. It turns out that there is a page visibility API that I wasn't familiar with. Of course, different browsers have different implementations at this point, but since we're using Electron we only have to concern ourselves with the Webkit implementation. I added the following code to my ngOnInit method to toggle the flag when the application visibility changes:

Authy for Desktop End of Life (EOL)

The Authy Desktop apps for Windows and MacOS that are available or were previously downloaded from authy.com/download as well as those for Linux will reach their End-of-Life in August 2024.

These top-rated apps offer similar or better features for securely storing your authenticator account tokens, and are fully supported and regularly updated. Simply download one or more of these apps from the relevant app stores..

The Authy Desktop apps for Windows and MacOS that are available or were previously downloaded from authy.com/download as well as those for Linux will reach their End-of-Life in August 2024.

The Authy Desktop apps for Windows and MacOS that are available or were previously downloaded from authy.com/download as well as those for Linux will now reach their End-of-Life (EOL) on March 19, 2024. These apps were previously scheduled to EOL in August 2024..

Although I also currently use Roboform for all of my 2FA needs, I love having Authy as a backup. (Plus, I do have the codes stored in printed form.) I must admit I rarely ever access the desktop version, but I like the format a lot. Although, Authy does not populate the 2FA field like Roboform does, so it is pretty useless to me. I just like having the security of a backup format. I guess I will live with the Android versions on my cell & my tablets.

Always an upside. The alternatives suggested included Keepassxc which I have used for years as my password manager. Setting up to 2FA always featured Authy or Google Authenticator and I have both on various devices. I hadn't realised that Kepassxc had 2FA support (and its difficult to find without a tutorial). Then simple to setup and, of course, works on all devices accessing the same database.

Bitwarden also allows this feature on a paid plan ($10/yr) if you like your password manager hosted. There are a few scripts kicking around github that allow you to export all your secrets from authy desktop or the browser extension by pasting some code in the console. I used it to migrate all my authy stuff to bitwarden.

When I first saw the suggestions, I looked into this and concluded KeePassXC was just a password manager. But you are right - it's there in the "Getting Started Guide" under "Database Operations" -> "Adding TOTP to an Entry".

The downside is that it has the opposite problem - its not available for phones! In theory if you can capture the original QR code then you could use it in combination with another authenticator app, but that seems painful.

This is a big win for the guys who sold Authy and are now swimming in dosh, and a very poor showing for Twilio management who bought, and now killed, something people apparently needed because Twilio management did not properly take into account the requirements of making Authy work.

I just had to migrate Authy from my old phone to the new one, and it was dystopian to say the least. To unlock the accounts for migration to the new device required changing my password - but you can't change your password without first unlocking all the accounts. I tried contacting Twilio only to find their "support service" is 98% navigating an FAQ with wrong answers in and 2% finally getting in touch with a human being. It got sorted after much hoop jumping, but ye gods, it couldn't be less friendly if they had an option to "Press 3 to hear rude remarks about your wife and/or mother".

This is a reminder that cloud versus on-prem remove some of the management burden but cloud providers can all pull these stunts and you just need to follow along. Real shame as the desktop client was ideal for systems that were shared amongst many users, such as in retail and hospitality.

3a8082e126