How I was signed in to Google on Vanadium after Signing to gmail on k-9?

Liam87

Just moved to GOS recently. A few days ago i downloaded k-9 email client and signed in to 3 gmail emails which went smoothly. Today, i had to use Google search on Vanadium and noticed that i was signed in as my gmail profile picture was shown in the upper right corner. I clicked on the icon and it opened an overlay with some setting. One of them was "manage more accounts" and next to it, it showed the profile picture of my other gmail accounts signed in to k-9!

My question is how was i signed in to my Google accounts in Vanadium after i signed to k-9?

The Passwords, passkeys & autofill section in the setting doesn't have my gmail accounts listed.

fid02

Liam87 That is because, in order to sign in to your Google account, the K9 app opens a custom tab in your default web browser, where you have to sign in to your Google account in order to give the app access to your Google account. Custom tabs share state with the browser, so if you sign in to an account in a custom tab, you will remain signed in to that account when you open the web browser.

I verified this myself two minutes ago.

SovereignCopper

fid02 Have you tested what happens if "Open external links in incognito" is enabled?

(Unfortunately, this option also applies to Home screen shortcuts, so it wouldn't be a great option to prevent custom tabs from sharing the browser state, because it would break much more than that.)

Liam87

Thank you for clearing that up I was very confused on how that happened

fid02

SovereignCopper Have you tested what happens if "Open external links in incognito" is enabled?

Interesting question. I can confirm that when "Open external links in incognito" is enabled, the custom tab opens in incognito mode, and the sign-in is conducted in incognito mode. When you afterwards open Vanadium in non-incognito, the Gmail account is not signed in.

Liam87

Haven't thought about opening in incognito.

The solution I'm currently implementing is to download another browser (brave in my case), assign it as the default browser, set it up with maximum security, and let it handle all those custom tabs requests.
While I'll keep using Vanadium for my everyday web browsing

Oggyo

Liam87
What about cleaning the Vanadium's browsing data? It will delete the sign-in session cookies.
Yes, you probably prefer to keep some cookies but eventually, you will come to a point where you need such cleaning. And I think it's a good idea to do it regularly.