A Geek Goes Flying

I’ve been using Google Authenticator on my phone for sites that require MFA. But picking up my phone to obtain a code is fraught with potential distraction / derailment. (Kind of an event boundary / doorway effect kind of thing.) So I was stoked to figure out I can add an Authenticator extension to Chrome to retrieve tokens ( authenticator.cc ). To export my accounts from the phone app, I had to go through one by one to generate QR codes, AirDrop a screen shot of the code to my laptop, and then import in the extension. A bit clunky, but I really only have to do it once (well, once for every device you want to use the extension on, sigh...). Adding the extension In Chrome (or apparently, also, FireFox, though the instructions will differ somewhat), use the ⋮ menu, Extensions, Visit Chrome Web Store, and search for Google Authenticator. Add the authenticator.cc extension: Me, I like to have something I’m going to use that often, pinned to my toolbar: Exporting accounts from the iP...

Well, wrote it and then helped me tweak it. The prompts were easy. The code pretty straightforward. The functionality is very basic. It just takes the current page title and URL and, using the things:/// URL scheme , adds an item to the inbox. (Yeah, in Safari, the “Share ... Add to Things” option does the same thing in Safari. But I’m not using Safari.) This cleans up after itself, closing the tab that was opened to call the Things URL integration a second after it’s finished loading. I’m generally happy with it, with a couple of “punch list” items. https://pastebin.com/ckfftFfc ChatGPT: Original extension creation Modifying it to auto-close the newly opened tab  To do: Need to figure out why the keyboard shortcut isn’t working (“ keyboard shortcuts do work , but   only if the extension is installed as a permanent add-on , not as a temporary add-on via   about:debugging .”) Need to modify it to use the contents of the clipboard rather than the URL, if on certain cites (l...