This version of Codebook for iOS features a few new enhancements that were requested or suggested recently by customers:
- Copying an available TOTP code to the clipboard while using Password AutoFill (as otherwise iOS gives us no ability to AutoFill TOTP codes, just usernames and passwords)
- A new Change Label option for Fields on an Entry view - available with a long press on the Field in question when the Entry is in Edit mode
- Built-in check for updates
If you are interested in beta testing Codebook for iOS, please sign up here to let us know!
TOTP Codes in Password AutoFill
Apple has made it possible for us to hook into the iOS Password AutoFill feature with an extension of Codebook. This allows us to supply basic credentials, i.e. just usernames and passwords. We’ve been waiting for them to announce some means to provide security tokens and TOTP codes since they debuted the feature, as Codebook has been able to generate TOTP codes for many years, but they have declined to do so over the last couple of releases of iOS (please file a Feedback report with Apple if you’d like to see this feature in iOS!)
A customer recently suggested that we work around this by automatically copying any available TOTP code on an Entry to the clipboard when you select it for Password AutoFill in the interface. Thus, after AutoFill returns the username and password and you hit Submit and are shown a TOTP input form, you can simply Paste the value from the clipboard without going back into AutoFill (where we can’t return it anyway).
It’s not the most ideal solution, but it works pretty well. The feature is not enabled by default, as some users may not wish to copy a security token to the clipboard. For those who do wish to use it, there is a new setting for it under the gear icon in the AutoFill interface. The first time you tap on an Entry to select it for AutoFill, if the Entry has a TOTP code, Codebook will present an alert dialog offering to turn the feature on – we hope this will make it more discoverable despite not being enabled by default.
Change Label
If you are the kind of person who likes to preserve your old passwords when generating a new one, you can simply label them differently in Codebook. However, it was recently pointed out to us that doing so on the Android and iOS versions is not so easy – see this Getting Started tutorial to get an idea of the many steps involved on iOS.
To make this easier, we’ve added a new context menu option to the Entry view–when an Entry is in Edit mode, long-press on a Field and you will see a new option, “Change Label.” Does exactly what it sounds like! Available in iOS 13 and later (Codebook supports 12.4 and up, but iOS 13 is required for these nice new context menus).
Update Checks
In this update we’ve added a feature for checking our website to see if we’ve updated the latest version number available, and displaying an alert letting you know that an update is available and a button for switching over to the App Store to install it. You can disable this check by going to the Settings view > Preferences, scrolling to the bottom, and setting the switch for “Automatically check for updates” to off.
We hope this feature will be of particular use to folks who don’t have the iOS feature enabled to automatically update their apps. Furthermore, it allows us to provide an additional message if necessary, should we need to alert you about a critical security issue, or information about compatibility and upgrades.
