diff --git a/nginx.conf b/nginx.conf
index 4bd6f90..b0c740b 100644
--- a/nginx.conf
+++ b/nginx.conf
@@ -100,15 +100,21 @@ http {
         default "";
     }
 
-    # @TODO: actually for auth.docker.io, if we want to support multiple authentications, we'll need to decide
-    # @TODO: based not only on the hostname, but also URI (/token) and query string (?scope)
-    # @TODO: I wonder if this would help gcr.io and quay.io with authentication also....
-
-    map $dockerAuth $finalAuth {
-        "" "$http_authorization";    # if empty, keep the original passed-in from the docker client.
-        default "Basic $dockerAuth"; # if not empty, add the Basic preamble to the auth
+    # First, build what we would inject from configured registry credentials (empty if none configured).
+    map $dockerAuth $injectedAuth {
+        ""      "";
+        default "Basic $dockerAuth";
     }
 
+    # Then prefer the Docker client's own auth header (bearer or basic it negotiated itself)
+    # and only fall back to injecting our basic credentials when the client has nothing.
+    # This fixes registries like quay.io that use bearer tokens for blob/manifest endpoints:
+    # without this, the proxy would overwrite the client's bearer token with basic credentials,
+    # causing 401s on the actual content fetch after authentication succeeded.
+    map $http_authorization $finalAuth {
+        ~\S     $http_authorization;  # client has auth (bearer or basic) — pass it through
+        default $injectedAuth;        # client has nothing — inject our basic credentials
+    }
 
     # Map to decide which hosts get directed to the caching portion.
     # This is automatically generated from the list of cached registries, plus a few fixed hosts