Users & access ​

BackIssue has a full multi-user system: accounts, roles, and fine-grained permissions. It's designed to run for a household or a small group where not everyone should be able to reshape the library or change settings.

The first account ​

A fresh install asks you to create the admin account before anything else — BackIssue never runs open and unsecured. That first account is automatically an admin; every request after that needs a login.

Accounts ​

Sidebar → Users (admins only) manages accounts:

• Create accounts with a username, password, and role.
• Change a role, disable an account (blocks login without deleting its data), or delete it.
• Allow self-registration — a toggle. When on, a sign-up tab appears on the login page and new accounts are created as viewers. Off by default; when off, only admins create accounts.
• Each row shows when the account last signed in, and a badge when it's linked to an external sign-in (SSO).

Guard rails prevent lock-out: you can't demote, disable, or delete your own account, and there must always be at least one active admin.

Your profile ​

Click your username in the sidebar → Profile. Everyone gets one:

• Account — set your email (used to link external sign-ins to your account), see when you joined and last signed in, change your password, sign out other devices (ends every session except the one you're on — for a lost or shared device), and sign out.
• API key — generate your personal key for apps and scripts that talk to your BackIssue install. It can do exactly what your account can do; see Building on the API.
• Per-user options from plugins — the reader adds its reading shelves toggles and reading defaults here; the OPDS plugin shows your catalog address.

Signing in with an identity provider (SSO) ​

Install the SSO (OpenID Connect) plugin from the Plugins page to let users sign in through an identity provider — Authentik, Keycloak, Auth0, Google, Microsoft Entra, and the like. The login page gains a "Sign in with…" button; a first-time sign-in links to an existing account by email or creates a new one (as a viewer, configurable). Admins can also disable password login for an SSO-only setup — admins keep a password fallback so a broken provider can't lock everyone out.

An account linked to an external service has no local password — it can't set one and an admin can't set one for it. Its access stays governed by the provider, so revoking access there (for example, an expired subscription with a billing integration) reliably locks the account out with no local password left behind. Such users can still create a personal API key for reader apps and scripts.

Roles ​

Three roles ship built in, each a superset of the one below:

New signups are viewers — safe by default: a household member can read the whole collection without being able to change anything. To let someone fill gaps without reshaping the library, make a custom role (below) with just Search & download.

Permissions & custom roles ​

Under the hood, every action maps to a named permission (browse, download, manage the library, manage settings, manage users, and so on — plus permissions that plugins add, like Read comics or OPDS catalog). The built-in roles are just bundles of these.

On the Users page you can create custom roles: give the role a name and tick exactly the permissions it should hold. Examples:

• A "downloader" role that can browse and download but not edit the library.
• A "kids" role that can read comics but not download or manage anything.

Custom roles pick up plugin permissions automatically, so you can grant or withhold reading, OPDS access, or request approval per role.

Content restrictions (mature series) ​

You can flag any volume as mature, hiding it from roles that don't hold the View mature content permission. On the volume page, a trusted user (or admin) toggles Mark mature; a 🔞 badge then marks it in the library list.

With Use enriched metadata enabled (Settings → Metadata), series with a Mature/Explicit/Adult content rating are flagged automatically when they’re matched or refreshed. The auto-flag fires once per series — if you unflag something manually, later refreshes respect your decision.

A flagged series becomes invisible to roles without the permission — not just dimmed. They won't see it in the library, its issues, wanted, or new-release notifications; they can't open it in the reader or reach it through the OPDS catalog. Every surface that lists or serves a series enforces the same rule, so there's no back door.

View mature content is a trusted-tier permission, so it's included in the built-in Trusted and Admin roles by default. To gate mature content:

• Give your general or kids' role everything except View mature content — the usual way to keep flagged series away from younger household members.
• Or build a custom role that explicitly holds it, and leave it off the others.

Because it's an ordinary permission, it composes with the rest: a "kids" role can read comics but never see a mature-flagged volume, while a "downloader" role could download but be blind to restricted series too.

Requests without escalation ​

When a plugin like Requests queues a download on a user's behalf, it runs under that user's own download permission — approving or requesting never grants someone rights they don't already have.

Sessions & login security ​

• Signing in sets a secure, HttpOnly session cookie (30 days). Signing out ends it.
• HTTP Basic is also accepted for scripts and tools, verified against the same accounts.
• Login rate limiting: repeated failed logins from the same source are throttled (a short lockout that grows with continued failures), which also covers Basic auth — brute-forcing a password is impractical.
• Responses carry standard security headers (clickjacking and MIME-sniffing protections).

Reading history is per-user ​

Reading progress, bookmarks, per-series reading profiles, reading stats, and personal reading lists are all per account — everyone gets their own. See Reading.