April 2026

Why TOTP still matters in a passkey world

Passkeys are excellent. They also are not everywhere yet — and RFC 6238 codes remain the universal fallback.

Passkeys remove passwords and phishing in one move, and we are glad they are spreading. But coverage is uneven.

  • Thousands of services still only offer TOTP as a second factor.
  • TOTP works offline, on any device, with no vendor lock-in.
  • It is a simple, auditable standard: a shared secret and the current time.

Authly implements RFC 6238 exactly, so any service that speaks TOTP works — and your codes keep generating even with no connection.