Delete Firebase anonymous users after a while

Question

I am using anonymous auth to allow my users to use the app without logging in. However, Firebase seems to persist these anonymous user IDs indefinitely. Is there a way to au

Answer 1

Unfortunately this is a "memory leak" (user leak?) Since there is no reasonable way to force an anonymous user to convert, these anonymous user ids will soon become zombies that serve no particular purpose (that I can think of). Furthermore, a single real user might (forgetfully) sign in as an anonymous user, yet again, after already linking their email to a previous incarnation, and then get frustrated when trying to link to their email. Overall, I find the current anonymous user implementation impractical, or at very least far from ideal.

For now I am planning to have an email address which is random but unique for a given user/device for signing in anonymous users, instead of using the builtin anonymous signin (which is disabled). In my opinion there needs to be a setting to tell Firebase to delete an anonymous user id upon sign out (they are useless at that point anyway) and/or after a predefined amount of time. In addition, it might be useful to be able to sign in again, with the same anonymous user id, until the expiration time (like by saving a token/etc.) Lastly, an attempt to link an email that is already in use should just merge the anonymous user id with the existing email/password user id through a verification step.