Default Auth State Persistence not working as expected with React + Vite

[dpschramm]

Operating System

macOS 14.5 (23F79)

Environment (if applicable)

Chrome 129.0.6668.60 (arm64), Vite 5.4.10, React 18.3.1

Firebase SDK Version

11.0.1

Firebase SDK Product(s)

Auth

Project Tooling

React app built with Vite

Detailed Problem Description

I expected auth state to persist by default as I am creating a web app with React and Vite. However, the auth state is cleared on page refresh.

I am accessing the auth state using onAuthStateChanged(). It never fires an event with a non-null user by default.

Setting the persistence setting fixes this:

const firebaseAuth = initializeAuth(firebaseApp, {
    persistence: [browserLocalPersistence]
});

I'm filing this bug as the default behaviour does not match the documentation in: https://firebase.google.com/docs/auth/web/auth-state-persistence#web

Steps and code to reproduce issue

1. Create a new React app using Vite
2. Attempt to read previous auth state using onAuthStateChanged()

Expected: receive an onAuthStateChanged() callback with a valid user, if the user was previously signed in.

Observed: never receive an onAuthStateChanged() callback with a valid user. Setting persistence manually during initializeAuth fixes this.

[google-oss-bot]

I couldn't figure out how to label this issue, so I've labeled it for a human to triage. Hang tight.

[DellaBitta]

Hi @dpschramm,

Unfortunately we couldn't reproduce this issue. We've created an verifiable example here. Could you alter it to reproduce the issue that you're seeing and let us know what the required changes are? Thanks!

[google-oss-bot]

Hey @dpschramm. We need more information to resolve this issue but there hasn't been an update in 5 weekdays. I'm marking the issue as stale and if there are no new updates in the next 5 days I will close it automatically.

If you have more information that will help us get to the bottom of this, just add a comment!