> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs-dev-chore-events-autoupdate.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Sessions and Cookies Overview

> Sessions and cookies temporarily store data about your users which you can use to manage you user's authentication status.

* A session is a group of interactions between a user and an application during a given timeframe. A single session may consist of multiple activities (such as page views, events, social interactions, and e-commerce transactions) and can store this information temporarily while the user is connected.

  With a standard Set-Cookie header implementation, a session ends when a user leaves a website or closes their browser. To prevent users from having to log in every time, applications can extend sessions by setting a maximum lifetime for the <Tooltip tip="Session Cookie: Entity that, when present, allows the user to be considered authenticated." cta="View Glossary" href="/docs/glossary?term=session+cookie">session cookie</Tooltip>. Sessions end when a user logs out or a session lifetime limit is reached.

* Cookies are strings of data that a web server sends to the browser. When a browser sends a future request to the web server, it sends the same string to the web server along with its request.

Websites typically use cookies to ensure that users are recognized when they move between pages, so they don't get asked to log in again every time. Websites also use cookies to remember information users have entered. For example, e-commerce sites use cookies to remember the items placed in a shopping cart.

## Concepts

<Columns cols={2}>
  <Card title="About Cookies" icon="head-side-gear" href="/docs/manage-users/cookies" horizontal>
    Describes what cookies are and how they can be used with sessions to track user authentication.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Session Layers" icon="head-side-gear" href="/docs/manage-users/sessions/session-layers" horizontal>
    Learn about Auth0 session layers created when a user logs in, the application session, the Auth0 session, and the IdP session layer.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Session Lifecycle" icon="head-side-gear" href="/docs/manage-users/sessions/session-lifecycle" horizontal>
    Learn about the Session Lifecycle.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Session Metadata" icon="head-side-gear" href="/docs/manage-users/sessions/session-metadata" horizontal>
    Learn how to use Auth0 session metadata to store custom data on a session that persists across requests and is accessible from Actions, the Management API, and tokens.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Anonymous Sessions" icon="head-side-gear" href="/docs/manage-users/sessions/anonymous-sessions" horizontal>
    Learn how to create and manage user sessions without requiring authentication.
  </Card>
</Columns>

## How To

### Manage Sessions

<Columns cols={2}>
  <Card title="Manage User Sessions with the Management API" icon="person-chalkboard" href="/docs/manage-users/sessions/manage-user-sessions-with-auth0-management-api" horizontal>
    Manage user sessions with the Auth0 Management API to list active sessions, revoke individual sessions, or end all sessions.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Manage Sessions with Actions" icon="person-chalkboard" href="/docs/manage-users/sessions/manage-sessions-actions" horizontal>
    Manage Auth0 user sessions with Actions to read session metadata, set custom session lifetimes, and revoke or extend sessions.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Configure Session Lifetime" icon="person-chalkboard" href="/docs/manage-users/sessions/configure-session-lifetime" horizontal>
    Describes how to configure session lifetime for a tenant using the Auth0 Dashboard, the Management API and Actions.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Configure Session Metadata" icon="person-chalkboard" href="/docs/manage-users/sessions/session-metadata/configure-session-metadata" horizontal>
    Learn how to configure Auth0 session metadata using Actions and the Management API.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Configure Anonymous Sessions" icon="person-chalkboard" href="/docs/manage-users/sessions/anonymous-sessions/configure-anonymous-sessions" horizontal>
    Learn how to configure anonymous sessions using the Auth0 Dashboard or Management API.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Configure Custom Claims for Anonymous Sessions" icon="person-chalkboard" href="/docs/manage-users/sessions/anonymous-sessions/configure-custom-claims-for-anonymous-sessions" horizontal>
    Map anonymous session metadata into access token custom claims using claims mapping.
  </Card>
</Columns>

### Manage Cookies

<Columns cols={2}>
  <Card title="Authentication API Cookies" icon="person-chalkboard" href="/docs/manage-users/cookies/authentication-api-cookies" horizontal>
    Learn about Authentication API cookies, including what they are, what they are used for, and how they should be handled.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Authenticate Single-Page Apps With Cookies" icon="person-chalkboard" href="/docs/manage-users/cookies/spa-authenticate-with-cookies" horizontal>
    Describes how to use your backend server to authenticate a single-page app (SPA) with cookies.
  </Card>

  <Card title="SameSite Cookie Attribute Changes" icon="person-chalkboard" href="/docs/manage-users/cookies/samesite-cookie-attribute-changes" horizontal>
    Describes how browser changes, such as the SameSite cookie attribute, affects your web applications that embed content from third-party domains.
  </Card>
</Columns>

## Use Cases

<Columns cols={2}>
  <Card title="Sessions Use Cases" icon="wrench" href="/docs/manage-users/sessions/use-cases" horizontal>
    Explore different ways to use sessions to determine whether a user is authenticated based on the kind of application and authorization flow involved.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Configure Keep Me Signed In with Sesssions" icon="wrench" href="/docs/manage-users/sessions/configure-keep-me-signed-in-sessions" horizontal>
    Learn how to configure Keep Me Signed with Auth0 sessions to give users persistent or ephemeral sessions.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Manage Multi-Site Sessions with the auth0-spa-js SDK" icon="wrench" href="/docs/manage-users/sessions/manage-multi-site-sessions" horizontal>
    Describes the workflow with the auth0-spa-js SDK to support multi-site session management.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Use Cases: Organization Information in Session Metadata" icon="wrench" href="/docs/manage-users/sessions/session-metadata/add-organization-information" horizontal>
    Learn how to use Auth0 Actions to add user organization information to session metadata.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Anonymous Sessions Use Cases" icon="wrench" href="/docs/manage-users/sessions/anonymous-sessions/anonymous-sessions-use-cases" horizontal>
    Learn about anonymous sessions use cases with Actions.
  </Card>
</Columns>