Manage the authentication experience

Kinde aims to give you as much control of your user’s sign up and sign in experience as possible, without compromising security. Here are some options for customizing the authentication experience in your applications.

You’ll find these in Kinde: Settings > Applications > View details on your application.

Use your own sign up and sign in screens

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Kinde offers custom authentication, allowing you to use your own sign up and sign in screens, bypassing the landing screens provided by Kinde. You can enable this for social sign in, email, phone, enterprise connections, or any combination of these sign up methods you support.

See Custom sign-up and sign-in pages for more details.

Create a unified sign-up / registration experience (seamless sign up)

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You can allow all users to register and sign from the same authentication screen, without forcing them to create an account first. To do this:

1. Update your app to redirect all authentication through the registration flow. To do this, change the link for the sign in button to go to the register button on the authentication screen. In Next.js, for example, you would change <LoginLink> to use <RegisterLink> instead.
2. Switch off the requirement to ask for first name and last name on registration (see section below).
3. Go to Settings > Applications > View details on your application. Scroll to the Authentication experience section.
4. Switch off the Show ‘Already have an account? Sign in’ on registration page option.
5. Go to Design > Pages > Sign up and update the copy on the sign up page to cater for both the registration and sign in experience. The result is:

• Users with an account will authenticate
• Users without an account will be registered
• Nobody will see a prompt to create an account

You can do this for any authentication method, e.g. email + password, email + OTP, phone + SMS OTP, social connection, or enterprise connection.

Ask for first name and last name on sign up

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By default, the Kinde sign up flow includes fields for users to enter their first name and last name. However, if you don’t want to collect user’s names, you can easily switch this off. This can make the sign up experience a bit faster, because when a user goes to sign up, all they need is their email, phone number, or their social sign in.

To switch off the name requirement for sign up

1. Go to Settings > Applications > View details on your application.
2. Scroll to the Authentication experience section.
3. Switch off Ask for user first name and last name.
4. Select Save.

Request consent for marketing on sign up

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If you want, you can add a checkbox to the sign up screen for collecting user consent to receive marketing communications.

See Request user consent for marketing on sign up for details.

Switch off Gravatar fallback for profile pictures

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Typically, Kinde receives user profile pictures via the email provider, e.g. Google. If no picture is attached to a profile, Kinde sets the picture to use a Gravatar URL instead. Gravatar sends us a profile URL and either the user picture (if available) or a blank avatar is displayed in Kinde. To avoid blank avatars and to handle profile pictures a different way, you can switch off the Gravatar fallback.

1. Go to Settings > Applications and select Configure on your application.
2. Scroll to the Authenticaton experience section and switch off the Use Gravatar fallback option.
3. Select Save.

Read more about email authentication.

Pre-populate user identity for sign in

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Create a smoother sign up and sign in experience for users by passing login_hint with the auth URL. This prefills the user’s sign in identity, saving them from manually entering their email or phone number. You might want to do this, for example, if you invite users to sign up via email and you want to reduce friction and make signing in faster.

See Pre-populate user identity on sign in for details.