Appsheet Apps present web login page when it's un-necessary (already logged in)

Andrew_Smith1
Participant III

I can reliably reproduce some strange behaviour as follows…

I have 4 Appsheet App Shortcuts on my phone: Let’s call them A, B, C and D

I’m using all of them by being logged in with my @hotmail account

A, C and D startup fine and the menu shows that I’m using my @hotmail account

B runs fine, however it always first shows me the signin screen below no matter how many times I log in using my @hotmail.com credentials.

I choose Microsoft and login as me@hotmail.com. The App (B) then works fine.

If I start up any of the other Apps (A,C or D), they work fine without presenting the above signin page. However if I open the menu I can see I’m logged in as me@hotmail.com

If I then exit A,C or D and startup B again … I get the signin page again.

If I startup A, C or D and then from within those Apps navigate to the menu and to my Shared Apps, I can see B, click it and it opens fine without presenting the signin page.

What is really wierd is that a few days ago, App C was displaying this behaviour and App B was running straight away when I clicked the shortcut. Told you it was wierd!

So here’s the question:
What causes this behaviour? (please resist the temptation to suggest it’s related to Google OAuth changes. No really … I’m using the Apps as me@hotmail.com.

Background info

  • I’m using all these Apps signed in with a hotmail account (like me@hotmail.com)
  • All the Apps have the same Google author (me on another account like me@google.com)
  • Apps A, B and C use a spreadsheet belonging to “me@google.com
  • App D uses a spreadsheet owned by me@hotmail.com
  • All the Apps have the same data settings as below:

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Andrew_Smith1
Participant III

TWO further observations about this strange behaviour

  1. Today App A has started offering the Web signin page and App B is now starting straight away without displaying the Web signin page.
  2. When I signin into the me@hotmail.com account I’ve been using to run the apps it proceeds to the App without asking me for my password!

(2) is really odd …under what logic is a username needed but a password not?

Andrew, the signin itself is a Microsoft-controlled process. If they don’t ask for a password, it is because it is cached away in a cookie on your device. This is how it remembers that you signed in recently. Again, this is not an AppSheet thing.

AppSheet also remembers that you signed in by recording that in its own cookie. I suspect what is happening is that your device has memory or storage pressure, so it is automatically wiping out cached information (including cookies) for apps that are not being used.

It’s an interesting idea Praveen but unfortunately it doesn’t fit the evidence…

  1. it only happens on one of my four apps that are on my phone. 3 apps choose not to display the sign in page. Your explanation might make sense if it always forgot the last app run. But it happens for days with a particular app while others work fine.

  2. I have 690MB of RAM space and 3Gb of disk space.

  3. It doesn’t matter if I log in with my Google account or my hotmail, the app doesn’t remember either while the other three apps do remember

  4. every couple of days it’s a different app that is not remembering that I’m logged in.so the behavior moves periodically from app to app. Therefore it’s not the specific app that’s that problem. The problem rotates.

Do you have any other ideas that are more consistent with the observed behaviour?

For example, could you summarise the logical tests that Appsheet makes to decide whether to display the signin page or not?

I’m sure we can track the cause down.

Andrew_Smith1
Participant III

@praveen
… don’t quit suggesting things buddy! I’m really open to ideas that might lead to a fix.
Interestingly, it hasn’t been doing it since the recent update to Appsheet (13.7)

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