Google Signin for iOS No Longer Using Google App

Question

So I recently updated the Google Signin API to 2.3.1 (and then 2.3.2 today) and ever since, my app no longer bounces me to the installed Google app for authentication. It instead always opens a web view in the app.

What changes have caused this?

To be clear, nothing is broken and sign in works just fine. In fact, it looks like the user doesn't need to enter a password if they are already signed in which is great. Still, why the change?

Answer 1

Are you on iOS9? I believe this is intentional. The team ended up changing the default behavior of the Google Sign-in library on iOS9 to prefer an embedded Safari View Controller. The rationale being that an embedded SFSafariViewController is probably a better overall experience on iOS9, and it's more reviewer-friendly.

If you really want to switch to a native app, you can add the line

GIDSignIn.sharedInstance().allowsSignInWithWebView = false

to your app, and it won't use webviews, but I really wouldn't recommend changing the default behavior unless you feel like it's really necessary.