Flutter Firebase authentication - new anonymous user generated following sign-out and sign-in

Question

The Firebase Authentication documentation states that:

If no previous anonymous account on the platform (for your specific application) has been created, when signing in anonymously Firebase will create a new unique user which will be persisted across app restarts/page reloads. If the user signs-out and reauthenticates anonymously again, they will be signed-in with the previously created account.

Yet when I sign out as an anonymous user and sign in again, I get a new anonymous user, instead of getting signed in with the previously created account. Just to be clear, the sign-in is done by calling FirebaseAuth.instance.signInAnonymously(), and the sign-out is done by calling FirebaseAuth.instance.signOut().

Answer 1

That looks like a mistake in the FlutterFire documentation. Once you sign out from an anonymous account, that account's UID is lost and cannot be reclaimed.

My best guess at the intention of the documentation is that calling signInAnonymously multiple times will result in the same UID. But signing the user out, clears that UID and it can't be reclaimed. I submitted a PR to improve the documentation here.