phpMyAdmin is one of the most favorite tool to access and manage MySQL databases. By default, your session will be timeout if there is no activity within 30 minutes and you'll be asked to log in again. A short cookie lifetime is all well and good on your production server. But, for web developers, it may be annoying like what I was experiencing.

To change that default value of phpMyAdmin session timeout (cookie lifetime). You will need to edit config.php which is located in the root of phpMyAdmin directory. Add this setting/configuration (anywhere):

$cfg['LoginCookieValidity'] = <your_new_timeout>;

Where <your_new_timeout> is the session timeout period or cookie lifetime in seconds.