Strava login: "An unexpected error occurred. Please try again."

[Johann Petrak]

Wanted to try this program.

Tried both GoldenCheetah_v3.8_x64.AppImage and  GoldenCheetah_v3.7-sp1_x64Qt6.AppImage under Ubuntu 24.04

For both, when I try to connect to Strava, after entering my email address, I get the error message "An unexpected error occurred. Please try again." 

Also get it later, and much later. 

It seems both versions are unusable for me since I need to import from Strava.

[Ale Martinez]

El jueves, 26 de febrero de 2026 a la(s) 1:14:33 a.m. UTC-3, johann...@gmail.com escribió:

Wanted to try this program.

Tried both GoldenCheetah_v3.8_x64.AppImage and  GoldenCheetah_v3.7-sp1_x64Qt6.AppImage under Ubuntu 24.04

For both, when I try to connect to Strava, after entering my email address, I get the error message "An unexpected error occurred. Please try again." 

This has been reported before, it is a temporary error from Strava side (for the authentication window GoldenCheetah only provides the browser support via Qt WebEngine, no code involved), typically fixed itself following the on-screen instructions (retry), there is a long-long discussion you can follow on https://groups.google.com/g/golden-cheetah-users/c/jt8GcS742r8/m/_En-euf5AQAJ

Also get it later, and much later. 

It seems both versions are unusable for me since I need to import from Strava.

There is nothing we can do about this, you may export from Strava and (auto)import to GoldenCheetah if you really need to. 

[Johann Petrak]

I do not see how this is not a bug -- every other program that authenticates with Strava over a web interface works for me

while I have tried this many times over at least a week now and it never worked. 

[Mark Liversedge]

On Thursday, 26 February 2026 at 15:51:26 UTC johann...@gmail.com wrote:

I do not see how this is not a bug -- every other program that authenticates with Strava over a web interface works for me

while I have tried this many times over at least a week now and it never worked. 

Have you integrated a desktop application with Strava?

How did that go?

Mark 

[Johann Petrak]

No, until today I have not. However, getting curious about this I have looked at the docs, registered a client and written a Python 

program that fetches my activities for a specific time range. The whole implementation took about 10 minutes. 

This app is limited to one user, but as far as I understand one can apply at Strava to allow more athletes, and get larger rate limits.

The app uses standard OAuth2 authentication to fetch an access token and then uses Strava's API to get the activities. 

I haven't looked at GC's source code to check how it is done there, but the authentication screen looks quite different to me and 

my approach requires authentication via a web browser and a callback domain. 

So, provided Strava is not trying to deliberately sabotage or fence out GC, this should work quite es well in GC, I believe

(but as I said, I just looked at this a few minutes ago for the first time, so I may miss an important point).

Cheers,

   Johann

[Ale Martinez]

El jueves, 26 de febrero de 2026 a la(s) 2:46:13 p.m. UTC-3, johann...@gmail.com escribió:

No, until today I have not. However, getting curious about this I have looked at the docs, registered a client and written a Python 

program that fetches my activities for a specific time range. The whole implementation took about 10 minutes. 

This app is limited to one user, but as far as I understand one can apply at Strava to allow more athletes, and get larger rate limits.

The app uses standard OAuth2 authentication to fetch an access token and then uses Strava's API to get the activities. 

I haven't looked at GC's source code to check how it is done there, but the authentication screen looks quite different to me and 

my approach requires authentication via a web browser and a callback domain. 

So, provided Strava is not trying to deliberately sabotage or fence out GC, this should work quite es well in GC, I believe

Likely so, it looks like the workflow using the system browser is supported by  Qt Network Authorization in v6.8, it would likely require a complete rewrite of OAuthDialog class and it has some advantages (like more resilience to Strava side changes due to better testing, I don't think Strava is doing anything against GoldenCheetah but more likely not testing with a WebEngine browser) and disadvantages (less integrated solution for a start, but others may arise), feel free to give it a try if you like to, contributions are welcome. 

[Paolo Tomasi]

I have the same behaviour in new installation on MacOS. As workaround I connected Strava to Google and then use Google authentication to authenticate Strava on GoldenCheetah