Steam mobile app or a desktop authenticator?
We build a desktop authenticator, so treat this page with the suspicion it deserves — and then read the recommendation, which is that most people should use Steam's official mobile app and not think about this again.
Use the official Steam Mobile app if it works for you. It is made by Valve, it recovers through your phone number when things go wrong, and it holds the secret in storage you never have to manage. For the large majority of Steam accounts that is simply the correct answer, and no feature below outweighs it.
This is a choice, not a combination
Worth settling first, because it is widely misunderstood: Valve states that an account "can only be on one authenticator ... at a time". Moving to a desktop tool means the phone app stops being your authenticator, and moving back means the reverse. Anything describing them as running side by side is describing an unsupported arrangement, not a feature.
Where the mobile app is genuinely better
- Recovery
- This is the big one. Lose your phone and Steam can text the number on the account to get you back. Lose a desktop authenticator's file with no backup and your route back is the recovery code or a support ticket that takes days.
- Nothing for you to mislay
- The secret lives in the app's own storage — there is no user-managed file to copy to the wrong place, sync to cloud storage, or hand to the wrong program. A desktop authenticator's entire risk model starts with the fact that such a file exists.
- It is official
- No third party between you and Valve. Every desktop option, ours included, asks you to trust somebody else with the most sensitive thing on the account.
- Modern sign-in
- The app can approve logins by notification and by QR code, so there is often no code to type at all. It also holds several accounts at once and sends sign-in notifications for each — which is more than it usually gets credit for.
- It is less likely to sit unattended
- A phone in your pocket spends far less time logged in and idle than the desktop you trade from. That is a difference of habit rather than of design, and it is most of why it matters.
Where a desktop authenticator is genuinely better
- Many accounts, side by side
- The app holds multiple accounts but shows one at a time. On a desktop they can be visible together, which for someone managing several is not merely faster but easier to check carefully.
- Trading volume
- Confirming Market listings in bulk on a phone is genuinely painful work.
- No smartphone, or no wish to use one
- Some people do not have a suitable handset; some will not install the app. This is the page for that — and it is more complicated than it sounds.
- Backups you control
- A file can be copied deliberately and kept somewhere safe. That is the same property as the risk — it cuts both ways, honestly.
The decision, stated plainly
If you have a working smartphone, trade occasionally, and run one account: use the mobile app. Nothing here should talk you out of it.
If you run several accounts, trade in volume, or cannot use the app at all, then a desktop authenticator solves a real problem — and the thing to compare is not features but failure modes. The alternatives page lists every option we know of, including the ones that are not ours, and the counterfeits are a genuine hazard in this particular corner of the internet.
Whichever way you go, moving between them costs something: switching carries a trade and Market restriction, so it is worth deciding once rather than experimenting.
Where ODA stands today
Stated so you can weigh it: this is a young project with no public release yet, no independent audit, and none of the years of scrutiny the mobile app has. Those are real disadvantages and open source does not cancel them. The current status is here, and the company behind it is named — which is the least you should demand of anything asking to hold a Steam secret.