How To Add Two Factor Authentication (2FA) To Your GitLab Account

A step by step guide on how to enable 2FA and use the UNLOQ app as a second factor for logging in to your GitLab account.

Published in

Passwordless Security | UNLOQ

3 min readNov 29, 2017

Passwords no longer offer your accounts the protection they were created for in the first place. Therefore, it’s important that whenever you can, you enable two factor authentication.

The majority of services and applications recommend using Google Authenticator mobile app for generating the login passcode, or one-time password used as a second factor. Despite being the most popular choice, it has its downfalls in the user experience chapter.

Besides allowing you to keep all your 2FA tokens in one place, the UNLOQ authentication app provides token Backup and Restore, which Google’s app fails to offer.

This post will help you set up two factor authentication for your favourite accounts using the UNLOQ app.

1. Get the UNLOQ mobile app

The first step to adding two factor authentication to your GitLab account is to download the UNLOQ mobile app and follow the in-app instructions.

You can get it for free from Google Play or App Store.

2. Set up 2FA for GitLab

After logging in to your GitLab account, go to:

https://gitlab.com/profile/account

Click Enable two-factor authentication:

You’ll receive a QR code that pairs your GitLab account to the authentication mobile app.

Open the UNLOQ mobile app and click the + (Plus) button in the Applications menu (make sure you granted camera access to the app beforehand). Scan the QR code you previously received :

GitLab has now been added to your list of applications. Tap GitLab in your list of applications to get the one-time password.

Now you may enter the 6-digit OTP and click Register with two-factor app in your GitLab account screen.

You will be presented with 10 different Recovery codes which you will use in case you cannot receive two-factor authentication codes. It is strongly advised that you save these codes before proceeding.

After you saved them, click Proceed: