Microsoft Authenticator Discontinues Apple Watch App

[boss.king]

pam pam pam
another one bites the dust

on a more serious note, nobody really wants to use apps on a watch if they have a phone in their pocket

What? Why would you choose to take out your phone to authenticate stuff if you could do it with a quick tap on your watch instead?

 

[NT1440]

Very annoying. It was definitely handy as a SysAdmin, but idk why it constantly said it couldn’t talk to the watch.

When it works it’s great.

 

[emulator]

I guess it depends on the work. In the film business you would be hard pressed to find a windows pc anywhere except as a prop on a show with a MS sponsorship. I’m sure there a few people who use them occasionally, but I rarely seem them. I, for one, never use any MS software outside of a gaming PC I built a few years ago just for games… and I’m considering converting it to Linux.

Think broader a bit, not just the computers you're seeing in front of you. What if I wanna access Azure ON MY MAC?

 

[dsmcclin]

Mirroring seems to work okay.

Do you mean that you can still approve with just mirroring? Or do we need the app to do that?

 

[segfaultdotorg]

Is it still available on the iWatch Pro? Just discontinued on the poverty-spec one?

 

[goobot]

Ms recently laid off 10k employees in order to protect their year of year increase in profits so I wouldn’t doubt their Apple Watch team got gutted with that. Sucks cause this was a perfect example of a good Apple Watch app.

 

[NT1440]

Ms recently laid off 10k employees in order to protect their year of year increase in profits so I wouldn’t doubt their Apple Watch team got gutted with that. Sucks cause this was a perfect example of a good Apple Watch app.

This was announced months ago in the admin portal so that’s not it.

Agreed on the app though. Simple, straight to the point, easy. Shame.

 

[Skyscraperfan]

Oh, you know - anyone who works at one of millions of organizations that use Office / Microsoft 365. Or consumer Outlook.com. Or XBOX. Or GitHub. Or goes to college (most use Office 365).

I just checked the prices. Office 365 is really expensive. For just about €15 you can buy a legal perpetual license. That's less than the price of Office 365 for three months.

 

[philstubbington]

What? Why would you choose to take out your phone to authenticate stuff if you could do it with a quick tap on your watch instead?

Yes. Seems counterintuitive when other MFA is on my iPhone. I just wish I could migrate everything to one app, and ideally the way Microsoft Authenticator does it.

 

[kyjaotkb]

I want to be sad about that but… that app never worked on my watch. Even the phone app has stopped sending me notifications and no-one at my IT dept could fix it. Microsoft Authenticator is hot trash.

 

[magbarn]

It's kind of frustrating that watch apps are getting less functionality or are even disappearing over time.

Having said that, I kind of loathe 2 factor authentification. First there was just a password, then there was a sms with a pin code (which I could read on my watch. Nowadays it's: Start login process, maybe solce increasingly unreadable captchas, pinging my phone, looking for the phone, opening the app, having touch ID not working when I got sweaty hands, closing iphone, reactivating TouchID with pin, opening app again, authenticate again. What used to take 5 seconds now sometimes takes over a minute. I haven't been hacked in the 20 years when there was only passwords and I'd happily trade the security of 2fa for convenience ir I had the choice. i hope, someone comes up with a better solution someday.

You just need to be hacked once and money stolen (like me) and you'll be singing a different tune. I don't do anything financially related unless it has 2FA option.

This is a real bummer because in my line of work, Microsoft authenticator is the de rigueur with no other corporate approved alternatives. So convenient to be able to approve on my apple watch.

 

[TheMacDaddy1]

LoL who needs MS Authenticator when a competitive authenticator is already built into iOS? (I suppose folks still stuck on PCs.) *

But ultimately I wonder if authenticators in general will be depreciated as the move to passwordless login increases.

*Edit. I forgot the /s.

Anyone that uses O365 with MFA turned on.

 

[TheMacDaddy1]

We use all Microsoft Apps for our work (very large healthcare org) and have no choice but to use MS Authenticator.

And it works with push/approve vs typing in a code with another app.

 

[trigf]

The Watch app became useless to me over a year ago when we rolled out additional MFA context that requires you to input a two digit number into the authenticator app on your phone. That functionality never made it to the Watch.

 

[trigf]

This sucks. I use the watch app all day with work. I have a bunch of Microsoft accounts that require the dumb app - and the watch app makes it so much easier as I just click an approve button over the iPhone app that requires me to open the app, FaceID and then click - and the worst part is its clicking in a different place on the screen every time because the notifications aren't always the same size.

Microsoft should bring this back - their added feature of number clicking can easily be implemented on the watch screen - the watch screens can display 3 2-digit numbers easily.

The basic notification functionality where you can allow/deny auth requests on your watch isn't going away. That's built into the phone app.

 

[NT1440]

The basic notification functionality where you can allow/deny auth requests on your watch isn't going away. That's built into the phone app.

Is this confirmed somewhere?

 

[Baritone_Guy]

Nobody chooses to use Microsoft Authenticator, lol! You need it even to login to your Microsoft account online. Even something like Xbox Live. And a lot of people have Office 365 for work to access email and use Office or One Drive. Nobody chooses this crap, it is chosen for you.

Not true. You can use any auth app that supports the necessary protocol. Google. Duo etc..It is just more work on them as you have to enter a code vs responding to a push notification

 

[TechNutt]

So many apps on the watch have been scrapped and it really annoys me, eBay had an app that worked fine a long time ago, my bank had one that worked perfectly for a long time that I could even use without my iPhone or card to generate an emergency ATM code and withdraw cash if I really had to.

Seriously, can't be that hard to maintain a basic watch app can it?. To all developers out there, stop scraping the bloody watch apps!

It’s basically what happened to the Windows phone. It’s favorite phone, yet, but got cannibalized from lack of app support. So is this some sort of revenge plot!?

 

[tgara]

I am just not going to update MS Authenticator...problem solved! I use the Apple Watch integration multiple times each day. I am not ready to give that up because it is so convenient.

Well this stinks. I used this app all the time on my Apple Watch.

The basic notification functionality where you can allow/deny auth requests on your watch isn't going away. That's built into the phone app.

Is this confirmed somewhere?

I just updated to todays release of MS Authenticator and can confirm the watch notification still works to confirm and respond to the authentication. You don’t need to resort to confirming on your iPhone to get it to work.

 

[Jordan Klein]

I just updated to todays release of MS Authenticator and can confirm the watch notification still works to confirm and respond to the authentication. You don’t need to resort to confirming on your iPhone to get it to work.

I can confirm that it does NOT work on my watch any longer. All it does is ask if I want to authenticate and offers a Dismiss button. I had to downgrade so I can authenticate from my watch again. All I have to do is click Approve or Deny on my watch. That has gone away with the latest release.

F- Microsoft over this.

 

[tooloud10]

Not true. You can use any auth app that supports the necessary protocol. Google. Duo etc..It is just more work on them as you have to enter a code vs responding to a push notification

I'm glad someone finally acknowledged this. I've used the iOS authenticator feature to log into my M365 account since Apple introduced the feature.

 

[tooloud10]

Is it still available on the iWatch Pro? Just discontinued on the poverty-spec one?

I guess it was only a matter of time until the people that invented the 'iWatch' came out with a new model that doesn't exist, either.

 

[bradman83]

It's kind of frustrating that watch apps are getting less functionality or are even disappearing over time.

Having said that, I kind of loathe 2 factor authentification. First there was just a password, then there was a sms with a pin code (which I could read on my watch. Nowadays it's: Start login process, maybe solce increasingly unreadable captchas, pinging my phone, looking for the phone, opening the app, having touch ID not working when I got sweaty hands, closing iphone, reactivating TouchID with pin, opening app again, authenticate again. What used to take 5 seconds now sometimes takes over a minute. I haven't been hacked in the 20 years when there was only passwords and I'd happily trade the security of 2fa for convenience ir I had the choice. i hope, someone comes up with a better solution someday.

To be fair texting with a code was considered a two factor authentication, at least until SIM cloning became a problem.

There are fair number of apps that are eschewing passwords altogether - you log in with your username and confirm yourself on a device that's already trusted. That's a bit like what Authenticator does.

 

[trigf]

Is this confirmed somewhere?

Yes, me.

Not good enough of a source? Try it yourself if you don't believe me.

 

[trigf]

I can confirm that it does NOT work on my watch any longer. All it does is ask if I want to authenticate and offers a Dismiss button. I had to downgrade so I can authenticate from my watch again. All I have to do is click Approve or Deny on my watch. That has gone away with the latest release.

F- Microsoft over this.

Simple logins that use enterprise MS accounts still work with an approve or deny. I am updated and I just tested an enterprise app that we have not enabled additional MFA on yet, and my watch is still presenting the approve / deny notifications that mirror the phone.