Add Anonymous Users
Allow guest users to use your apps and website and promote to regular users later.
Overview
You can use the Anonymous Users feature to create an anonymous user account for the guests in your apps so that they can carry out interactions just like a normal user. For example, guests can post comments and save preferences in your social platform before setting their email and password. The user session will persist even if the app has been closed.
This improves the app experience because the user does not need to set up authenticators until further down the user journey, while still enjoying most of the app features. For app developers, the ability to create and assign Anonymous Users also makes it easier to link the activities of an individual before and after sign-up.
Enable Anonymous Users for your project
In the portal, go to Authentication > Anonymous Users.
Turn on Enable anonymous users.
Save the settings.
Using the SDK
Sign up as an Anonymous User
This will create an Anonymous User for the session. Subsequent requests from the end-user in the session can be identified by the same sub
Check the UserInfo object
UserInfo
Promotion of an Anonymous User
The promoteAnonymousUser
function can be called to promote an anonymous user to a regular user. You'll call the function with a login ID (e.g., email, phone number) and authenticators (e.g., password). The end-user will be prompted with a sign-up page to complete the promotion. The sub
of the end-user will remain the same after the promotion.
User Lifetime
Mobile apps
On Mobile SDKs, creating an anonymous user will create a key-pair. The key-pair is stored in the native encrypted store on the mobile device. The end-user can always re-login to the same anonymous user with the key-pair. Such anonymous user will become inaccessible when the encrypted store is removed.
Web apps and websites
On the Web SDK, there will be no key-pair created. Therefore, the end-user will not be able to login to the same Anonymous User after their session becomes invalid. For cookie-based authentication, it is controlled by the "idle timeout" and "session lifetime" of the Cookie. For token-based authentication, it is controlled by the "idle timeout" and "token lifetime" of the Refresh Token.
In other words, the anonymous user account lifetime is the same as the logged-in session lifetime.
To adjust the lifetime settings, change the timeouts and lifetimes in Portal > Applications accordingly.
Caution for high-traffic websites
You should create anonymous users only when necessary in the user journey to prevent creating excessive orphan accounts in your tenant.
Last updated
Was this helpful?