When I try to navigate to the following cart link from my external app:
I receive a “Link expired” error.
However, when I open the same URL in an incognito browser window, it loads correctly.
Could you please help me understand why this is happening and how to resolve it?
Thank you!
Hey @naffah_khalil - I can’t say for certain exactly why this is happening without a bit more information, but since the link is working in incognito, it is likely a browser-state issue with your day to day browser. If you clear your cache/cookies on your “main” day to day browser Chrome instance, you should see the link work. These issues can also often pop up if you’re using certain browser extensions, etc. If the issue persists after clearing your cookies though and if you’re not running any extensions, just let me know and we can take a look.
If you can test the link on another browser (Firefox, for example) and it works - the likely reason is temporary internet data from your usual day to day browser.
Hope this helps a little bit 
Hello @naffah_khalil
Have you been able to rectify the issue you are facing or should share an experience with a user as well, could definitely help you
Hi @Robert_Clark
I am unable to rectify the issue.
Great question — and yes, this is a common Shopify behavior related to session-based cart tokens and cookies. Here’s what’s likely going on:
Why it works in incognito
When you open the cart or checkout link in an incognito window. there are no existing Shopify session cookies — so Shopify creates a clean, valid session and token for that checkout link.
Why it fails in a regular browser
In your regular browser:
How to fix or handle this
Here are a few ways you can approach this:
This works for testing but isn’t practical for users.
Option 2: Use cart.js or the Storefront API
Instead of generating a checkout URL externally:
/checkout— keeping everything within their active Shopify session.This avoids the token conflict issue entirely.
Option 3: Clear or reset the session
Not always recommended — but if your app controls the store session or you can trigger a logout/reset before redirecting to the new checkout, it’ll avoid conflicts.
Summary
The issue is a session conflict — Shopify restricts conflicting checkout tokens in the same session for security and consistency.
Best practice: Use Shopify’s built-in cart flow (via Storefront API or cart.js) to keep checkout in the same session.
Hey @Robert_Clark hoping you can look deeper into this one as this behaviour seems to have increased exponentially in the last day or so.
I’d never seen this error before on the order status page and now my team and I are seeing it in almost every test both on dev stores and production stores.
Merchants are also seeing it when testing on their stores too.
For context, we have been running order tests and demos for the last couple of years across multiple stores and have never, ever had this issue.
But since yesterday, we are all getting slammed with it.
Clearing Shopify cookies or using a different browser/incognito seems to solve it but that’s not sustainable for us. We need to be able to reliably navigate through to the Order Status page on every store without the OSP link expiring immediately.
It seems like there’s something happening in the cookies/session security that has become over protective in the last day or so:
We recently shipped an update for this - are you still seeing this on your side?
Amazing thank you @Liam-Shopify !
We’ve just completed end to end testing across a range of scenarios and all working beautifully again. Please pass along our thanks to the team that shipped the fix 
