The biggest shortcoming in Apple’s newly launched Apple TV is the lack of a Remote app for the iPhone. In particular, when you first set it up, you’ll have to manually enter your Netflix password, Hulu password and more using your Apple TV remote. But Facebook’s new SDK for tvOS seems like a good way to avoid this cumbersome onboarding experience.
Like on iOS, Facebook lets you integrate its SDK in your apps so that developers can leverage the ‘Log in with Facebook’ feature. But there is a twist on tvOS. Instead of asking for your Facebook password the first time, you’ll be able to avoid this step.
As you can see in the top illustration, the login screen tells you to go to facebook.com/device on your phone. If you’re logged in on your phone, you’ll just have to enter an 8-character confirmation code to associate your Facebook account with your Apple TV. If you’re not, you’ll have to log in to Facebook first, which is much easier to do on a phone.
Facebook isn’t the only one using this technique. If you’ve downloaded the YouTube app on the Apple TV, you may have noticed that you can connect it to your Google account by using the same process. Similarly, Android TV uses the same login mechanism for devices running Android TV.
When it comes to other Facebook SDK features, app developers can use this SDK for analytics purposes. It logs events just like the SDK for iOS.
You can also integrate Facebook share buttons in your app to share links, photos, videos and more. Game developers might find this feature useful to boost their growth. And of course, if you log in using Facebook, developers can leverage Facebook’s social graph to find your friends in multiplayer games for example.
But other types of apps rely heavily on the social graph, like Tinder. Given that it’s Thanksgiving in the U.S., we can all thank Facebook for making Tinder on your TV a possibility.
