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Frequently Asked Questions

Note: auth0-react uses Auth0 SPA JS behind the scenes, so be sure to check their FAQs too.

  1. User is not logged in after page refresh
  2. User is not logged in after successful sign in with redirect
  3. How to handle authentication in Electron or other native applications using react

1. User is not logged in after page refresh

There are usually 2 reasons for this:

1. The user logged in with a Social Provider (like Google) and you are using the Auth0 Developer Keys

If you are using the Classic Universal Login experience, Silent Authentication won't work on the /authorize endpoint. This library uses Silent Authentication internally to check if a user is already signed in after page refresh, so that won't work either. You should either change to the New Universal Login experience or add your own keys to that particular social connection.

2. You are using a browser like Safari or Brave that has Intelligent Tracking Prevention turned on by default

In this case Silent Authentication will not work because it relies on a hidden iframe being logged in to a different domain (usually auth0.com) and browsers with ITP do not allow third-party (eg iframed) cookies. There are 2 workarounds for this using Rotating Refresh Tokens or Custom Domains

2. User is not logged in after successful sign in with redirect

If after successfully logging in, your user returns to your SPA and is still not authenticated, do not refresh the page - go to the Network tab on Chrome and confirm that the POST to oauth/token resulted in an error 401 Unauthorized. If this is the case, your tenant is most likely misconfigured. Go to your Application Properties in your application's settings in the Auth0 Dashboard and make sure that Application Type is set to Single Page Application and Token Endpoint Authentication Method is set to None (Note: there is a known issue with the Auth0 "Default App", if you are unable to set Token Endpoint Authentication Method to None, create a new Application of type Single Page Application or see the advice in issues/93)

3. How to handle authentication in Electron or other native applications

When using Auth0 React in Electron or other native/desktop applications, handling authentication redirects can be challenging because:

  1. The default redirect-based authentication flow requires page reloads, which may need special handling in native contexts
  2. Native apps often use custom URL schemes (like electron://, file://) for deep linking

The setAuthCallbackUrl method provides a solution for these scenarios by allowing you to manually set the authentication callback URL with auth parameters.

Example usage in Electron:

import { useAuth0 } from '@auth0/auth0-react';

function App() {
  const { loginWithRedirect, setAuthCallbackUrl } = useAuth0();

  // Set up a custom protocol handler in your Electron app
  // When your app receives a deep link with auth params, call:
  const handleAuthCallback = (url) => {
    setAuthCallbackUrl(url);
  };

  return <button onClick={() => loginWithRedirect()}>Log in</button>;
}

You would need to configure your Electron app to:

  1. Register a custom URL protocol (e.g., your-app://)
  2. Set your Auth0 application's callback URL to include this protocol in the Allowed Callback URLs section of the Settings tab of your Auth0 application.
  3. Intercept the callback URL in your main process and pass it to your renderer where you can call setAuthCallbackUrl

This approach prevents having to reload the entire application when handling authentication callbacks and works well with custom URL schemes that native applications typically use.