Fix Azure CLI ‘User cancelled the Accounts Control Operation’ on Windows

Work around an Azure CLI login failure on Windows by clearing the account state and disabling the Web Account Manager broker.

Published Reviewed Reading time1 minuteByMichaël Vandenbulcke

During an interactive az login from PowerShell, the authentication flow returned an unexpected cancellation error.

Symptom#

The Azure CLI returned:

User cancelled the Accounts Control Operation.. Status: Response_Status.Status_UserCanceled, Error code: 0, Tag: 528315210

The sign-in prompt had not been cancelled, which made the message misleading in this case.

Cause#

Beginning with Azure CLI version 2.61.0, Web Account Manager (WAM) became the default authentication method on Windows. In my case, the failure appeared while the CLI was using that brokered sign-in flow.

Workaround#

I cleared the Azure CLI account state, disabled the Windows broker, and started a new login:

az account clear
az config set core.enable_broker_on_windows=false
az login

az account clear removes the current Azure CLI account state, so expect to authenticate again. Disabling the broker also changes the sign-in path for subsequent Azure CLI sessions on that Windows environment; apply the workaround only where it fits your organisation’s authentication policy.

Result#

The non-brokered login completed successfully. For newer Azure CLI releases, check the current authentication guidance before changing the broker setting.