Android: Switching apps to get the SMS code dismisses the Auth0 modal

Describe the problem

On our Android devices, when you app-switch to get the Auth-code from your Messaging application, when you return to our App, the Auth0 modal dismisses, so you’re forced to restart the process, and hopefully see the Auth-code from the notification-overlay.

This is a duplicate of #438, but I can’t reopen that ticket.

I’ve verified that the Auth0 tenant is marked as Production, and this was initially discovered via customer service complaints.

What was the expected behavior?

App-switching should leave the Auth0 login modal webview visible. On iOS this does not occur.

Reproduction

I don’t have a small reproduction sample, but #438 does. I have a video recording, but it includes a private phone number, and I don’t yet know how to mask that out. Please advise if you’d like me to research that.

1. Launch the app (on Android)
2. Click the Login button
3. Fill in your phone number for SMS passwordless auth
4. Switch to your Messaging app to read the code
5. Switch back to the app, and find that the web view has dismissed itself, and you have to start over

Environment

• Version of this library used: 2.3.8
• Which framework are you using, if applicable: N/A
• Other modules/plugins/libraries that might be involved: N/A
• Any other relevant information you think would be useful: N/A

[poovamraj]

If you use the Task Manager instead of clicking the App Icon, then the problem does not occur. – What does this imply?

This means intent is sent invoking a new activity instance instead of just reusing the already running activity. We noticed this behaviour when connected to debugging server but not while running the application without it.

Thanks for reporting this issue. We will look into this.

[poovamraj]

@fbartho @mostafa-abardeh, we are closing this issue for now since we are not able to reproduce this in a production version. Please feel free to reopen this with a sample application & repo. It will be of great help. Thanks