[Users] No fun with Google 2FA

Barry Warsaw barry at python.org
Tue Aug 16 21:17:18 CEST 2016


I recently enabled two factor auth (2FA) on my Google account, and thus my
Gmail.  In order to use Claws with my Gmail account, I now have to generate an
app password, and use that when Claws prompts me to log into Gmail.  So far so
good.

Claws even has an option to remember the password for the remainder of the
session, but this doesn't actually seem to be the case.  After a while (maybe
12 hours, maybe a day, I haven't timed it) Claws will tell me that it couldn't
log on and will prompt me for my Gmail password again.

This is problematic because afaict, Google's app password page cannot show you
already generated passwords.  If you dismiss the "Generated app password"
window, I see no way to get Google to show you the password again.  My only
option is to revoke the old, unrecoverable password, and generate a new one.
This gets pretty annoying!

I also don't like this because if I have multiple desktops, each running a
Claws instance, it's fairly inconvenient to copy the password back and forth
between the two.  I can of course generate a second app password for the Claws
on the other machine, but now I'm doubly annoyed when the passwords apparently
time out.  I'll note that in none of these cases have I ended my desktop
session or otherwise quit Claws before the Gmail login begins to fail.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to know that this is all Google's fault. ;) If
there isn't much Claws can do about it, so be it.  But if other people use
Google 2FA and aren't seeing this problem, I'd love to know how you get it to
not drive you batty.

Is there anything more Claws can do to help?

Cheers,
-Barry
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