firebase-admin

• A bug in the TypeScript type declarations that come bundled with the SDK (index.d.ts) has been fixed (#70).

• A new Cloud Storage API that facilitates accessing Google Cloud Storage buckets using the @google-cloud/storage library.

Authentication

• New type definitions for the arguments of createUser() and updateUser() methods.

Cloud Messaging

• Redefined the arguments of sendToDevice() using intersection instead of overloading.

• Added the method getUserByPhoneNumber() to the admin.auth interface. This method enables retrieving user profile information by a phone number.
• createUser() and updateUser() methods now accept a phoneNumber property, which can be used to create users with a phone number field and/or update the phone number associated with a user.
• Added the phoneNumber field to admin.auth.UserRecord, which exposes the phone number associated with a user account.
• Added the phoneNumber field to admin.auth.UserInfo, which exposes the phone number associated with a user account by a linked identity provider.

• Improved the error messages thrown in the case of network and RPC errors. These errors now include outgoing HTTP request details that make it easier to localize and debug issues (#50).
• Implemented support in the user management API for handling photo URLs with special characters (#44).

• The deprecated serviceAccount property in the admin.App.Options type has been removed in favor of the credential property.
• createdAt and lastSignedInAt properties in admin.auth.UserMetadata has been renamed to creationTime and lastSignInTime. Also these properties now provide UTC formatted string values instead of Date values.
• Initializing the SDK without setting a credential results in an exception.
• Initializing the SDK with a malformed private key string results in an exception.

• Updated the SDK to periodically refresh the OAuth access token internally used by FirebaseApp . This reduces the number of authentication failures encountered at runtime by SDK components like Realtime Database .

Cloud Messaging

• Added the methods subscribeToTopic() and unsubscribeFromTopic() to the admin.messaging() service. The new methods allow subscribing to and unsubscribing from FCM topics via registration tokens.

Authentication

• Cleaned up a number of types to improve the log output, thereby making debugging easier.

Realtime Database

• Fixed an issue which could cause infinite loops when using push() with no arguments.

• Fixed incorrect usage of undefined - as opposed to void - in several places in the TypeScript typings.

• Added missing properties to the TypeScript typings for DecodedIdToken .

• Fixed issues when using some types with the TypeScript strictNullChecks option enabled.

• Removed incorrect admin.Promise type from the TypeScript typings in favor of the Node.js built-in Promise type, which the SDK actually uses.

• Added error codes to all app-level errors. All errors in the SDK now properly implement the FirebaseError interface.

• Improved error handling when initializing the SDK with a credential that cannot generate valid access tokens.

• Added new admin.database.EventType to the TypeScript typings.

Realtime Database

• Improved how the Realtime Database reports errors when provided with various types of invalid credentials.

Authentication

• Improved input validation and error messages for all user management methods.

• verifyIdToken() now works with non-cert credentials, assuming the GCLOUD_PROJECT environment variable is set to your project ID, which is the case when running on Google infrastructure such as Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine.

Realtime Database

• Added toJSON() methods to the DataSnapshot and Query objects to make them properly JSON-serializable.

Cloud Messaging

• Improved response parsing when sendToDevice() and sendToDeviceGroup() are provided with unexpected inputs.

• Added in missing TypeScript typings for the FirebaseError.toJSON() method.

Authentication

• Fixed issue with createUser() which sometimes caused multiple users to share the same email.

• Added in missing TypeScript typings for the toJSON() method off of several objects.

Cloud Messaging

• A new admin.messaging() service allows you to send messages through Firebase Cloud Messaging . The new service includes the sendToDevice() , sendToDeviceGroup() , sendToTopic() , and sendToCondition() methods.

Initialization

• Fixed an issue which caused importing the library via the ES2015 import syntax ( import * as admin from "firebase-admin" ) to not work properly.

• TypeScript support has been greatly improved. Typings for the Realtime Database are now available and all other known issues with incorrect or incomplete type information have been resolved.

Initialization

• Fixed an issue which caused the SDK to appear to hang when provided with a credential that generated invalid access tokens. The most common cause of this was using a credential whose access had been revoked. Now, an error will be logged to the console in this scenario.

Authentication

• The error message for an auth/internal-error error now includes the raw server response to more easily debug and track down unhandled errors.

• Fixed an issue that caused an auth/internal-error error to be thrown when calling getUser() or getUserByEmail() for a user without a creation date.

• Fixed an issue which caused an auth/internal-error error to be thrown when calling createUser() with an email that corresponds to an existing user.

• Fixed an issue which caused an auth/internal-error error to be thrown when calling Authentication methods with a credential with insufficient permission. Now, an auth/insufficient-permission error will be thrown instead.

Authentication

• Fixed an issue that caused several Authentication methods to throw an error when provided with inputs containing Unicode characters.

Initialization

• Fixed an issue that caused a null value for the databaseAuthVariableOverride property to be ignored when passed as part of the first argument to initializeApp() , which caused the app to still have full admin access. Now, passing this value has the expected behavior: the app has unauthenticated access to the Realtime Database , and behaves as if no user is logged into the app.

Authentication

• Fixed an issue that caused an auth/invalid-uid error to be thrown for valid uid values passed to several Authentication methods.

• Improved error messages throughout the Admin Node.js SDK.

• Upgraded dependencies so that the Admin Node.js SDK no longer throws warnings for using deprecated Buffer APIs in Node.js 7.x.x .

• Fixed issue which caused the 4.0.0 release to not include the README.md and npm-shrinkwrap.json files.

• The Admin Node.js SDK (available on npm as firebase-admin ) is a new SDK which replaces and expands the admin capabilities of the standard firebase npm module. See Add the Firebase Admin SDK to your Server to get started.

• This version does not include the README.md and npm-shrinkwrap.json files. This was fixed in version 4.0.1 .

Initialization

• The serviceAccount property of the options passed as the first argument to initializeApp() has been deprecated in favor of a new credential property. See Initialize the SDK for more details.

• The new admin.credential.cert() method allows you to authenticate the SDK with a service account key file.

• The new admin.credential.refreshToken() method allows you to authenticate the SDK with a Google OAuth2 refresh token.

• The new admin.credential.applicationDefault() method allows you to authenticate the SDK with Google Application Default Credentials.

Authentication

• A new Admin API for managing your Firebase Authentication users is now available. This API lets you manage your users without using their existing credentials, and without worrying about client-side rate limiting. The new methods included in this API are getUser() , getUserByEmail() , createUser() , updateUser() , and deleteUser() . See Manage Users for more details.

• The createCustomToken() method is now asynchronous, returning a Promise<string> instead of a string .

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Last updated 2026-09-10 UTC.

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