Can I import 2FA codes from a password manager?
Migration · Help center · Current as of 2026-10-10
Short answer
Usually yes, as long as the manager will export the codes. Bitwarden’s export carries each entry’s otpauth:// URI and 1Password’s CSV has a one-time password column, but field names are not standardised, so open the file and look. KeyNesta reads a list of otpauth:// links pasted straight in, or a CSV with a secret column.
Getting the file into a shape KeyNesta reads
- Best case: otpauth:// links. Pull them out of the export, one per line, and paste them into the import box. Everything else — issuer, digits, period, algorithm — travels inside the link.
- Otherwise: a CSV. It needs a
secretcolumn holding the base32 secret on its own. A column containing a wholeotpauth://URI will not do as a secret. What a CSV import needs has the recognised column names.
The preview tells you what it found before anything is written, and reports the rows it could not read rather than skipping them silently.
Delete the export when you are done
An export that another app can read holds your secrets in the clear, and a password manager export holds your passwords too. Move it, check the preview, import, then delete the file and empty whatever trash it went to. Do not email it to yourself on the way.
Why move them out at all
A password manager that holds both the password and the second factor turns two factors back into one: whoever opens that vault has everything. Keeping the codes in a separate app with a separate passphrase is the whole point of the exercise, and it is worth finishing the job — leaving half the codes behind gives you two places to look and no extra safety.
Try KeyNesta free. The web app needs no sign-up.
Open the web app All platforms