Overview

CircleCI has introduced an important update to its Version Control System (VCS) connection management. Previously, customers were unable to delete their VCS connections with CircleCI on their own and required reaching out to the CircleCI Support Team when seeing the following "Error adding identity" Message

"The identity provided by your VCS service is already associated with a different account"

This was prevalent for issues such as joining the wrong organization, connecting with the incorrect GitHub user, or resolving general permissions issues - customers had to reach out to our support team for assistance.

Prerequisites

• A user account integrated with the GitHub OAuth or BitBucket integration
  • Please note that Standalone VCS integrations such as GitHub App and GitLab are not supported at this time

Unlinking your User Identity

If you are signed in to CircleCI using your email + password, you will need to do the following to unlink your GitHub account. 

1. Sign out of CircleCI
2. Clear your browser Cache 
3. Sign in to CircleCI from a fresh browser by authenticating with your VCS(GitHub or Bitbucket)
   1. To do this, you will need to Click the "Signed up for CircleCI with GitHub or
      Bitbucket before September 2023?" button found on the login page : https://circleci.com/vcs-authorize/
      

From here you can disconnect your VCS connection  by following the steps below: :

1. Navigate to your user settings page when signed in as the user which is incorrectly/previously linked.
2. Click the red Disconnect button under the VCS section you wish to unlink for either GitHub or BitBucket.
3. Confirm your selection and explicitly confirm this action by typing DISCONNECT in the provided field to confirm

Upon confirming the disconnect action, you will be redirected back to the CircleCI login page to log in with the account you wish to connect.

Reconnecting to Your VCS

If a user chooses to reconnect their VCS with CircleCI, they can easily do so. 

We recommend singing up for CircleCI using your email + password.  You can do this by clicking the "Sign up" button : https://circleci.com/signup/

If you already have a CircleCI account that uses your email + password, please sign in. You can then navigate to your user settings page and connect your VCS using the CircleCI Classic GitHub OAuth Integration and/or CircleCI BitBucket OAuth Integration. 

Alternatively, If a user previously signed up with Github or Bitbucket before September 2023, they simply need to login with Github to reconnect.

Additional Notes

• The above VCS management functionality is currently available only for Classic (GitHub OAuth and BitBucket) organizations.
  • However, we are excited to announce that we will soon be implementing a similar set of connection and disconnection options for Stand Alone organizations (such as those connected with the GitHub App and GitLab integrations)
• Please note that you may need to recreate any Personal API Tokens after deleting your user identity on your user settings page

Additional Resources

• Signing into CircleCI if your account was setup using OAuth integration for BitBucket and GitHub
• How do I manage my People Settings for my GitHub organization?
• Is my project setup using GitHub OAuth or GitHub Apps?
• Troubleshooting the "Error adding identity" error