keycloak-scim/docbook/reference/en/en-US/modules/timeouts.xml

<chapter id="timeouts">
    <title>Cookie settings, Session Timeouts, and Token Lifespans</title>
    <para>
        Keycloak has a bunch of fine-grain settings to manage browser cookies, user login sessions, and token lifespans.
        Sessions can be viewed and managed within the admin console for all users, and individually in the user's account
        management pages.  This chapter goes over configuration options for cookies, sessions, and tokens.
    </para>
    <section>
        <title>Remember Me</title>
        <para>
            If you go to the admin console page of Settings->General, you should see a <literal>Remember Me</literal> on/off switch.
            Your realm sets a SSO cookie so that you only have to enter in your login credentials once.
            This <literal>Remember Me</literal> admin config option, when turned on, will show a "Remember Me" checkbox on the user's login page.
            If the user clicks this, the realm's SSO. cookie will be persistent.   This means that if the user closes their browser
            they will still be logged in the next time they start up their browser.
        </para>
    </section>
    <section id="session-timeouts">
        <title>Session Timeouts</title>
        <para>
            If you go to the Sesions and Tokens->Timeout Settings page of the Keycloak adminstration console there is a bunch of fine tuning
            you can do as far as login session timeouts go.
        </para>
        <para>
            The <literal>SSO Session Idle Timeout</literal> is the idle time of a user session.  If there is no activity
            in the user's session for this amount of time, the user session will be destroyed, and the user will become logged
            out.  The idle time is refreshed with every action against the keycloak server for that session, i.e.: a user login,
            SSO, a refresh token grant, etc.
        </para>
        <para>
            The <literal>SSO Session Max Lifespan</literal> setting is the maximum time a user session is allowed to be alive.  This
            max lifespan countdown starts from when the user first logs in and is never refreshed.  This works great with <literal>Remember Me</literal>
            in that it allow you to force a relogin after a set timeframe.
        </para>
    </section>
    <section>
        <title>Token Timeouts</title>
        <para>
            The <literal>Access Token Lifespan</literal> is how long an access token is valid for.  An access token contains everything
            an application needs to authorize a client.  It contains roles allowed as well as other user information.  When
            an access token expires, your application will attempt to refresh it using a refresh token that it obtained in the
            initial login.  The value of this configuration option should be however long you feel comfortable with the
            application not knowing if the user's permissions have changed.  This value is usually in minutes.
        </para>
        <para>
            The <literal>Access Code Lifespan</literal> is how long an access code is valid for.  An access code is obtained
            on the 1st leg of the OAuth 2.0 redirection protocol.  This should be a short time limit.  Usually seconds.
        </para>
        <para>
            The <literal>Access Code Action Lifespan</literal> is how long a user is allowed to attempt a login.  When a user tries
            to login, they may have to change their password, set up TOTP, or perform some other action before they are redirected
            back to your application as an authentnicated user.  This value is relatively short and is usually measured in minutes.
        </para>
    </section>
</chapter>