Php setcookie not working on Android phones

Question

I have the following code where I set cookies normally. It was working fine until the new SameSite update from chrome. It stopped working. I've added the SameSite as you can see but a few users who use Chrome on Android are having issues logging in. I did some logging to try and figure out why users couldn't log in and it seems like some users who use older versions of android and chrome are unable to login because the following code apparently doesn't work for them.

$expire = time() + 4 * 7 * 24 * 60 * 60; // Making the cookie live for 4 weeks
$en_string = "some string";
setcookie("username", $en_string, $expire, "/; SameSite=None; Secure");
setcookie("login_key", "1", $expire, "/; SameSite=None; Secure");

I am running Php5 5.6.30 on apache and CentOS. Any help what should I change. The response from apache_response_headers() is

Array
(
    [X-Powered-By] => PHP/5.6.32    
    [Accept] => application/json
    [Set-Cookie] => username=some string; expires=Fri, 13-Nov-2020 05:20:25 GMT; Max-Age=2419200; path=/;samesite=strict
    [Expires] => Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
    [Cache-Control] => no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
    [Pragma] => no-cache
)

That is not how `setcookie` is supposed to be used. What’s the actual HTTP header output by this? — deceze, Oct 16 '20 at 05:14

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 20 '22 at 03:31

I've seen the same problem in php 5.7.4. The one difference I see is that when the first routine I can uses setcookie, it works. Then I include another file and do another setcookie and it fails. If I make sure all the cookies get set in the same routine, that's a workaround. But this is clearly a fairly deep bug somewhere.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 20 '22 at 09:27

Please check if you have and where in your code usages of session_start() and/or header() functions. They might invoke an issue around cookies.

Also see these answers:

NB! Cookies might be disabled in your mobile browser. To enable it (for example in Chrome):

At the top right, tap "More" and then "Settings".
Tap "Site settings" and then "Cookies".
Turn Cookies on or off.

Php setcookie not working on Android phones

2 Answers2