Google or GitHub sign-in fails
The three things that go wrong on that round trip, and what each one means.
The button is not there
Provider buttons only appear when that provider is configured. A button you can see is a button that works, so if Google or GitHub is missing from /login and from the sign-in sheet, that route is not switched on and there is nothing to retry.
Use the email link or a password instead: signing in.
It came back and refused
The round trip carries a random value twice: in a short-lived cookie on your browser, and signed with our own key in the request to the provider. Both have to agree when you come back. That is what stops somebody forging the return trip, and it is also the commonest reason a sign-in that looked fine is refused.
It happens when:
- the cookie was blocked or cleared part way through, which is usual in a hardened private window or with a cookie blocker set to its strictest;
- the round trip took more than ten minutes, because the cookie lasts ten minutes and no longer;
- you started in one browser and finished in another, for example because the provider opened its page in an app's built-in browser.
The fix in every case is the same: go back to /login, press the button again, and complete it in one go in one browser.
It signed me in, but to a new empty account
An identity is only ever attached to an existing account on a verified email match. If the address Google or GitHub gave us is different from the one on your account, or if the one on your account has never been confirmed, the safe answer is a separate account, not a merge.
Sign in to the original account and add the provider from the How you sign in section of your account page. That is the place where linking is a deliberate act rather than a guess.
If GitHub is not handing over an address at all, check that your GitHub account has a verified email address it is willing to share.
Rate limiting
Repeated attempts from the same browser slow down on purpose. If you have pressed the button a dozen times, wait a minute before the next one.
Nothing here matches
Write to us from /support, with the browser you used and roughly when. A person reads every message.