Migration guide

How to Migrate from Ente Auth to Fob in 2026

Published April 26, 2026. Works whether or not you use Fob.

Ente Auth is one of the strongest FOSS authenticators on the market, and it does something almost none of its peers do well: it ships a real iPhone build. The team behind Ente Photos extended their encrypted-storage philosophy to TOTP secrets. The result is an app with end-to-end encrypted cloud sync, native builds for iOS, Android, web, and desktop, GPL-3.0 source you can read, and a maintained release cadence. If your priorities are publicly-auditable code on iPhone with cloud sync you do not operate yourself, Ente is the right answer today.

This guide is for users where Ente is great but not perfect: 50+ accounts where one group per entry no longer scales, a need for family sharing, or evaluation work before picking a destination.

The iOS caveat, up front

Fob is Android-first today. iOS is on the roadmap, not on the calendar with a date. If iPhone is your only platform, you stay on Ente Auth for now and join the Fob iOS notify list; the iOS build is announced to subscribers first. The same vault, accounts, and tags will work on both when iOS ships. Soft-pedaling that fact would be the kind of thing Ente users notice immediately, so we will not.

If you carry an Android device today, the rest of this guide applies. If you are iPhone-only and reading ahead, the file format and import flow are the same on both platforms.

Why move from Ente Auth (or why not)

Ente Auth is genuinely good. The places where it is not the right answer are specific:

• Single group per account. Ente Auth assigns each entry to one category. At 60+ accounts that breaks down: a Coinbase account is crypto, exchange, and high-value simultaneously, and Ente makes you pick one. Fob is the only authenticator that lets one account carry multiple tags and filter by any combination.
• No first-class family sharing for auth codes. Ente Photos has shared albums; Ente Auth does not extend that to a shared-account model for TOTP. Sharing today means handing over the device or scanning the same QR into two installs, which doubles the secret material in circulation.
• Two products, one trust relationship. Most Ente Auth users also use Ente Photos; the accounts are linked. If you want a single-purpose authenticator from a vendor whose only product is the authenticator, that is a different shape.

If those three are non-issues, Ente Auth is the better app. Stay there. If even one bites, the rest of this guide is for you.

What you keep, what you do not

Ente Auth exports the entire vault. Every account, with every property: secret, issuer, name, algorithm (SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-512), digit count, period, OTP type (TOTP, HOTP, Steam), notes. Fob preserves all of those.

Two things do not transfer cleanly:

• Cloud sync history. Ente Auth keeps an encrypted change history on its servers so you can recover an entry you deleted last week. The migration moves the current vault state, not the history. If recovering a deleted entry from three weeks ago matters, do that recovery in Ente Auth before you export.
• Group assignment. Ente Auth groups become Fob tags during import. Each entry that had a group gets one tag with the same name. Add more tags after.

Everything else (the secret material that actually generates the codes) transfers exactly.

The Ente Auth export format

Ente Auth produces a .ente file. Two flavors:

• Encrypted (the default and the right choice): a base64 ciphertext, encrypted with AES-256-GCM. The key is derived from a password you set at export time, using Argon2id. Meaningless to anyone without the password.
• Plain text: a .txt file with otpauth:// URIs, one per line. Anyone who can read the file can read your secrets. Use this only if you are immediately importing and immediately shredding.

Use the encrypted export. Fob handles both, but the plain-text form is a shotgun pointed at your own foot. The format is documented in the Ente Auth repository, which is part of why Ente is trusted, and what makes the migration safe to verify.

How to migrate in about five minutes

With Ente Auth open on the device that has your accounts:

1. Open Ente Auth, tap the menu, choose Settings > Data > Export codes.
2. Pick Encrypted (recommended). Set an export password. Pick something memorable for the next ten minutes; you type it once on the destination device, then delete the file. Treat it like a passphrase, not a PIN.
3. Save the resulting .ente file somewhere you can reach from the destination device. Treat it like a password file: do not email it, do not paste it into chat, delete it when done.
4. On your destination phone (Android while iOS is in development), open Fob, tap Add account, choose Import from Ente Auth.
5. Pick the .ente file, enter your export password. Fob runs Argon2id locally, decrypts the vault in memory, and shows you the list it found.
6. Review the list. Group assignments come across as tags; add more tags now or later.
7. Confirm the import.

The decryption happens entirely on-device. The plaintext vault is never written anywhere except the Fob database, which is itself encrypted. After the import, delete the export file, both the source and any cloud copy used to move it across.

What happens to your Ente Auth data on each platform

Nothing, unless you remove it. Exporting is a read operation; every account on every device is still there, and the encrypted backup on Ente's servers is untouched. An export should not break your fallback.

The recommended path for a few days after migration:

• Use Fob as the primary app on Android.
• Keep Ente Auth installed on every device. If a service rejects a Fob code (rare, with clock drift), Ente still has the secret, including on iPhone or desktop where Fob is not yet available.
• Once every account has been logged into at least once with Fob codes on Android, decide whether to wipe Ente Auth there. On iOS or desktop, keep Ente until Fob ships on those platforms.

The encrypted cloud backup on Ente's servers is still there. Leave it as a cold backup, or delete the account from inside Ente Auth.

After migration, what Fob does differently

The migration is the point of this page; Fob is one option among several. Here is what changes if you end up on Fob rather than Aegis, 2FAS, or the Bitwarden authenticator.

• Tags, not groups. A Coinbase account can be crypto, exchange, and high-value at the same time. Filter by any combination, save the filter, switch tags in two taps. No other authenticator has this. It is the reason most Ente users who migrate end up here.
• One vault across platforms when iOS ships. The same vault, accounts, and tags on both, with the same encrypted sync underneath.
• Zero-knowledge sync. Your vault is encrypted on-device with AES-256-GCM. The key is derived from your password with Argon2id (the same primitives Ente uses, for the same reasons) and never leaves your devices. Fob's servers hold a blob they cannot read. Architecture at /security.
• Family sharing (post-MVP). Fob will support sharing a specific account with another Fob account, encrypted to both vaults, revocable from either side. Ente Auth does not ship this for the auth product.
• Export any time. If Fob ever stops being the right choice, your vault exports in an open format behind a reauth prompt. You can put it back into Ente Auth the same day. Fob is structurally unable to hold your codes hostage. The same property that made Ente trustworthy.

What Fob does not do that Ente Auth does: source code you can read, and an iOS build that exists today. Fob is closed source. The substitutes for source access are the export-always guarantee above, the architecture description at /security, and a third-party security audit committed post-launch (the report posts at /security when complete). If what made you pick Ente was specifically "I want auditable code on iOS," Ente is the right call right now. The Fob iOS notify list is where to be if you want to evaluate Fob when iOS ships.

If you also have accounts in Authy, see /import/authy. For Google Authenticator, /import/google-authenticator. For Microsoft Authenticator, /import/microsoft-authenticator. For Aegis, /import/aegis. For 2FAS, /import/2fas. For Bitwarden, /import/bitwarden. For Duo, /import/duo.

Fob is on Google Play, Android first. iOS follows. The homepage notify list is where the iOS build is announced first.

FAQ

Is Fob open source like Ente Auth?

No. Fob is closed source. The trust model substitutes three things for source access: every Fob vault exports in an open format any time you ask, the encryption architecture is published at fob.codes/security with the actual primitives and parameters, and a third-party security audit is committed post-launch (the report posts at fob.codes/security when complete, and the plan is to repeat it annually). If you picked Ente primarily because the source is auditable, those substitutes may not be enough, and Ente is the right call. If you picked Ente for a real export, zero-knowledge encryption you can reason about, and a maintained authenticator from a small team, Fob hits those without source access.

When will Fob support iOS?

Android first, iOS second. iOS is on the public roadmap, not on the calendar with a date. The same vault and tag set will work on both, with the same end-to-end encrypted cloud backup underneath. If iOS is the only thing keeping you on Ente Auth, the iOS notify list on the homepage is the right place to wait; the iOS build is announced to those subscribers first. Switching authenticators on iOS twice (Ente now, then Fob later) is more work than waiting.

Is Ente Auth still actively maintained?

Yes. The Ente team ships releases on a regular cadence and the auth app sits inside the broader Ente product family alongside Ente Photos. The maintenance question some users ask about smaller FOSS authenticators is not really a concern for Ente in 2026. If long-term maintenance was your only worry, you can put it down.

What about my Ente Photos account?

Untouched. Ente Auth and Ente Photos are separate apps with separate vaults, even though they share a parent account. Migrating TOTP codes off Ente Auth does not affect your Ente Photos library, billing, or login. Switching authenticators is not a switch away from the photos product.

Does my Ente Auth backup keep working if I switch?

Yes. Exporting your codes does not invalidate them inside Ente Auth, and uninstalling the app on one device does not delete the encrypted backup on Ente's servers. Until you log into Ente and delete the account, the backup is still there. Most users keep Ente Auth installed on at least one device for a few weeks after migration, in case a service rejects a Fob code with clock drift.