Cognito User Pools

User Pools are user directories used to manage sign-up and sign-in functionality for mobile and web applications.

Users can sign-in directly to the User Pool, or indirectly via an identity provider like Facebook, Amazon, or Google. Cognito acts as an Identity Broker between the ID provider and AWS. Successful authentication generates a number of JSON web tokens (JWTs).

Identity Pools enable you to create unique identities for your users and authenticate them with identity providers. With an identity, you can obtain temporary, limited-privilege AWS credentials to access other AWS services.

Push Synchronization

Cognito tracks the association between user identity and the various different devices they sign-in from.

In order to provide a seamless user experience for your application, Cognito uses Push Synchronization to push updates and synchronize user data across multiple devices.

Amazon SNS is used to send a silent push notification to all the devices associated with a given user identity whenever data stored in the cloud changes.