Starting Sep 16, 2024, Github is forcing most users to use 2FA with their accounts. As some people like me either don't like to be dependent on a third-party app to generate the login tokens or simply don't have a mobile device, I decided to write this little command-line tool.

• Capture the inital QR code containing the secret key via the System's clipboard
• Generate tokens
• Should work not-only with github - though that is untested
• Store up to 10 accounts locally

• Node.js 18+
• Java 8+, though I'd recommend OpenJDK 17+

git clone https://github.com/scanline/github-2fa-helper

As Node.js offers no way to watch the user's system clipboard, we need to use a little java helper tool which has to be compiled first.

npm run build

Afterwards install the dependencies.

npm install

If you visit https://github.com/settings/security and select Enable two-factor authentication you'll see a screen like this:

Time to start the tool! Head to the installation folder and enter:

npm start

which will bring you the following menu:

Press 0 on your keyboard, head back to the github page making sure the QR code is visible and hit the print-screen key.

That's it!

To actually generate a token, push 1 and press the corresponding number for your desired account e.g. 0 in this case.

The token will refresh itself, usually every 30 seconds and pressing c will copy it to the clipboard. You can go back to a previous menu or quit the tool by pressing the escape key.

The time you set up 2FA for github, you will also get a list of recovery codes. Make sure to download those!

For convenience, this tool saves the secret chained to a particular issuer in a file called settings.json inside the tool's folder. Don't ever delete or modify this file or you will lose access to your account(s)!

Better make a backup regularly or even modify the code to store it somewhere else on your harddrive.

I'm not responsible for lost access - you use this tool at your own risk!