How to automatically delete one-time passwords from Google Messages
A new Google Message update will take care of those old temporary passwords
One-time passwords, otherwise known as OTPs, are great for keeping your accounts secure. They want anyone to sign in to an app or site to provide a one-time code from a trusted device, not just to know the username and password. If you’ve ever received your OTP through text, you know that they can start adding up and get messy. Fortunately, Google is finally solving the problem.
What is the problem with OTP?
OTPs are great, but once used they are useless (hence the name). If you constantly sign in to the account with 2FA, for example, you will receive these one-time passcodes frequently, use them, then ... leave the text forever. After all, the only thing that annoys me more than a sea of useless codes is deleting these codes one by one, every time you sign in to your account.
How to delete temporary passwords in Google Messages
Google has begun rolling out a new update to its flagship messaging app, Google Messages. The big change with this update is the conversations section, which uses AI to automatically group your various text threads into groups. At the moment, those groups consist of "all", showing you all your threads; "Personal," which shows your text from friends and family; And "business," which collects texts from work and other more formal contacts.
However, there is a new setting buried in the update that is not getting much attention. If you go to "Messages", you will see a new option for "Automatically delete OTPs after 24 hours". All you have to do is enable the feature, and remove your 2FA codes from your phone 24 hours after they arrive.
24 hours is still quite generous; With 2FA in particular, the codes are only useful for a very short time - usually minutes instead of hours. If you do not enter the code in time, it will expire and you will need to create a new one to proceed. However, at least during this time tomorrow, the code you created will be deleted from your phone, ready to make room for the next code, and then one.
How to download the latest Google Messages update
This feature, as well as the entire conversation section feature, has not yet been completely rolled out. As such, you have to wait for it to hit your device. To check out, download the latest version of Google Messages from the Play Store
