0.5.0

Features

• #30: Optionally automatically submit the USB security key PIN dialog after a customizable number of characters have been typed, which is more convenient than having to press Enter at the end.
  • Enable with the argument --autosubmit-pin-length=5, where 5 is the length of your PIN.
  • Thanks @felipecrs for suggesting this.

Fixes

• #36: Change the detection algorithm for the style of FIDO dialog box (23H2 or 25H2) to avoid comparing UI label strings which can collide across multiple dialog boxes in some languages, causing incorrect behavior. Instead, use an automation IDs that happens to have unique values per OS version.
  • Thanks @AlanIWBFT for reporting this.
• #44: Force this program to always run as administrator, because the Windows 11 2026-01 Security Update raised the integrity level of the Windows Security dialog box process
  • If you had already set this program to autostart when you log in to Windows, that may silently fail now because Windows refuses to show UAC prompts for startup programs. To fix this, run AuthenticatorChooser --autostart-on-logon once more, which converts the registry autorun into a scheduled task.
  • Thanks to @Nono-m0le for reporting this, and @AFulgens, @DennisGaida, @felipecrs, @danofnz, @AshtonKnight, and @NETertainer for experimenting with and testing solutions.

0.5.0-beta.2

Fixes

• #44: Force this program to always run as administrator, because the Windows 11 2026-01 Security Update raised the integrity level of the Windows Security dialog box process
  • If you had already set this program to autostart when you log in to Windows, that may silently fail now because Windows refuses to show UAC prompts for startup programs. To fix this, run AuthenticatorChooser --autostart-on-logon once more, which converts the registry autorun into a scheduled task.
  • Thanks to @Nono-m0le for reporting this, and @AFulgens, @DennisGaida, @felipecrs, @danofnz, @AshtonKnight, and @NETertainer for experimenting with and testing solutions.

0.5.0-beta.1

Features

• #30: Optionally automatically submit the USB security key PIN dialog after a customizable number of characters have been typed, which is more convenient than having to press Enter at the end.
  • Enable with the argument --autosubmit-pin-length=5, where 5 is the length of your PIN.
  • Thanks @felipecrs for suggesting this.

Fixes

• #36: Change the detection algorithm for the style of FIDO dialog box (23H2 or 25H2) to avoid comparing UI label strings which can collide across multiple dialog boxes in some languages, causing incorrect behavior. Instead, use an automation IDs that happens to have unique values per OS version.
  • Thanks @AlanIWBFT for reporting this.

0.4.0

Features

• #9: Compatibility with 2025 Windows redesign
  • Thanks to @felipecrs, @rockerest, and @godeater for help investigating and testing

0.3.1

Fixes

• #21: Fixed race condition where some computers would erroneously ignore the Windows Security dialog box if AuthenticatorChooser tried to read the heading text before it was rendered by Windows
  • Thanks to @AFulgens for reporting, debugging, identifying the root cause of, and testing this.
• Automatically exit the process when logging out of Windows (including for computer restart or shutdown) to try to avoid a crash error dialog box.

0.3.0

Features

• #15: Added option to choose the USB security key option even if a paired phone or Windows Hello TPM passkey is available. By default, this program would only choose the USB security key if the sole other option was pairing a new phone, but you can make it also skip already-paired phones, PINs, and biometrics by starting it with --skip-all-non-security-key-options.
  • Thanks to @rubenf1999 and @Formula84 for the suggestion, and @DBRomano84 for testing.

Fixes

• #8: Error when dialog opens when the Alt+Tab window switcher is open
  • Skip interacting with Windows Security dialog box if the Alt+Tab window is open
  • Catch spurious COMException
  • Embedded debug symbols into executable so stack traces will have line numbers without having to download a separate PDB file and reproduce the issue
  • Added file logging option

    # log to %TEMP%\AuthenticatorChooser.log
    .\AuthenticatorChooser.exe --log
    
    # log to custom file path
    .\AuthenticatorChooser.exe --log="c:\users\ben\desktop\ac.log"

  • Thanks to @EchterAgo for the report and investigation.
• #11: Retry for a longer period for the Windows Security dialog choices to load
  • Thanks to @pakud for the report and investigation.
• #8, #18: Localize search strings using the user's locale and all installed system locales
  • Thanks to @EchterAgo and @jannispl for the reports, investigations, and a suggested fix pull request.

0.2.0

Features

• #7: Each Windows user can only run one instance of this program at a time
  • Thanks to @waltersenekal for sharing this suggestion
• You can register this program to automatically start when you log in to Windows, as an alternative to editing the registry yourself

  .\AuthenticatorChooser.exe --autostart-on-logon

• Added usage statement dialog box if you run this program with --help or similar options

Fixes

• #5: Fixed a race condition that was causing this program to do nothing on some computers
  • Retry finding a deferred UI element for a longer duration
  • Changed the delay between retries from constant to power backoff in order to avoid spinning the CPU too much over the longer retry duration
  • Thanks to @Omzig and @waltersenekal for bringing this to my attention, experimenting with different solutions, and testing

0.1.1

Fixes

• #4: Fixed crash when other non-FIDO Windows XAML prompt boxes were shown, such as UAC prompts when desktop dimming was disabled
  • Thanks to @Smeegs for raising this issue and @NeoTheFox for identifying the specific scenario
• Minor localization performance improvement
• Updated dependencies

0.1.0

Features

• Added ARM64 build in addition to the existing x64 build

Fixes

• #2: Fixed several issues preventing the program from working on Windows installations and user accounts not localized to English
  • Thanks to @doxycomp for raising and helping investigate this

0.0.0

First release