What is the main difference between Google SignIn and OpenId Appauth

Question

I used to do Google SignIn by adding Google SignIn button and performing the same steps given by Google and I love this flow.

But my company asked me to do google signIn by OpenId Appauth and their concern is, if we will use OpenId Appauth then it will support all social logins like Google, Facebook and LinkedIn in one short. Is anyone has idea what is actual difference and is it good to use OpenId Appauth for google Sign In.

Answer 1

Lead maintainer of AppAuth here (and former Googler who worked on Google Sign-in). The Google Sign-in SDK uses native support for Google authentication provided as part of Google Play Services, meaning authentication occurs using native Android dialogs and only works on devices which have Google Play Services available.

AppAuth uses a browser-based flow, via custom tabs if available. The authentication flow has slightly worse UX as a result, but works on any Android API 16+ device with a browser. AppAuth also works the same with any OAuth2 / OpenID Connect identity provider, so it can help simplify your code compared to using multiple different authentication libraries for each IDP.

It's worth noting that Facebook's OAuth2 implementation isn't great; they typically assume you will be using the Facebook SDK to authenticate. I haven't tried integrating with LinkedIn, so I can't speak to their level of support for the AppAuth approach.