Failed Silent Auth - Login required

Right. So the silent authentication issue, the “login required” error, is what you get when your browser does not, or cannot, send the “auth0” cookie. This is the cookie that Auth0 leaves on the browser client once the user has a session with Auth0, i.e. the user has logged in through an interactive flow. You should be able to confirm this by looking at the network logs or analyzing the HAR output. The scenarios that work will have the cookie attached, whereas the ones that fail will not. If that’s the case, this is neither a sample nor SDK issue as they are not involved in the setting of that cookie; it is issued by the authorization server.

If the browser cannot sent this cookie, it’s most likely because of some software or browser extension or something which is blocking third-party tracking cookies. Safari does this by default thanks to its Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP2) software that is built-in. This can explain why silent auth works in Chrome’s incognito mode but not in normal mode. If you’re running some extensions, you might want to disable some of them to narrow down which one is preventing the cookie from being sent.

What I can’t readily explain is how it works in Safari’s Private mode, as I thought ITP2 would block such cookies regardless. Let me get some clarity on that.

In any case, this is most likely an issue with browser configuration/software/extensions that is somehow getting in the way of the browser being able to send that cookie, so I would continue your search there.

Having said all of that, this situation is obviously not ideal and rest assured that we are actively working on a solution that will allow you to get around this.

4 Likes