Accessing your organization if your identity provider is unavailable

Organization owners can sign into GitHub even if their identity provider is unavailable by bypassing single sign-on (SSO) and using their recovery codes.

Who can use this feature?

Organization owners can use a recovery code to bypass SAML SSO.

In this article

About recovery codes

Organization owners can use one of their downloaded or saved recovery codes to bypass single sign-on. You may have saved these to a password manager. For more information about downloading recovery codes, see Downloading your organization's SAML single sign-on recovery codes.

You can only use recovery codes once and you must use your codes in consecutive order. Recovery codes grant access for 24 hours.

Using a recovery code

  1. Attempt to access the organization.
  2. Under the single sign-on dialog, click Use a recovery code.
  3. In the "Recovery Code" field, type your recovery code.
  4. Click Verify.

After you've used a recovery code, make sure to note that the code is no longer valid. You will not be able to reuse the recovery code.