Social Identity Provider Support for Native Authentication is Generally Available
If you build customer-facing apps, you know the tension: users expect to sign in with the accounts they already have, but you don’t want to hand the whole experience over to a redirect that breaks your app’s look and feel. Social Identity Provider Support for Native Authentication is now Generally Available in Microsoft Entra External ID, and it threads that needle.
What the feature does
Native authentication lets you keep the primary sign-in and sign-up experience rooted in your own app UI. With this release, those native journeys can now include social identity providers — Apple, Facebook, Google, and custom OpenID Connect providers.
The social step itself runs in a secure, browser-delegated web-view flow. So users stay in your familiar app experience for the core journey, and the social handoff happens through a standards-based, secure path rather than a bolted-on detour.
Why it matters
- Keep an app-first UX while still offering the consumer sign-in options users expect.
- Add social providers without building a disconnected identity journey alongside your native flow.
- Stay on standards-based identity with OpenID Connect support for custom providers.
How to enable it
- Enable native authentication for the app registration in Microsoft Entra.
- Configure the social identity providers you want in External ID.
- Add the redirect URI and social sign-in buttons in your app using the Native Auth SDK pattern.
- Pass the right domain hints and test sign-up and sign-in flows end to end.
Where it fits
Customer onboarding lives and dies by friction. Every extra redirect, every jarring context switch, costs you conversions at the exact moment you’re trying to win a new user. Native authentication already gave developers a way to keep that journey inside the app; adding social providers means you no longer have to choose between a clean native flow and popular consumer sign-in.
For teams building on External ID, this is the missing piece that lets you offer Apple, Google, and Facebook sign-in without fragmenting the experience or giving up policy control.
Conclusion
This gives teams a cleaner path to customer onboarding without sacrificing control. It’s a smart balance: app-first UX, standards-based identity, and a social sign-in flow users already understand — all in the same journey.
