Twitter Fabric SDK Comes To The Apple TV

One week after Facebook announced its SDK for tvOS, Twitter is also announcing its plans for Apple’s new platform. Developers will be able to integrate Digits into their apps and use Crashlytics.

As a reminder, Digits is part of Twitter’s Fabric tool set. With Digits, users can sign up to a service using their phone numbers and Digits handles SMS verification. Many messaging apps have been using Digits, and it looks like a good way to avoid entering passwords using the Apple TV remote.

As you can see in the top illustration, the login screen tells you to go to digits.com/appletv on your phone. You’ll just have to enter a 6-character confirmation code and then log in on your phone. As it can be cumbersome to type on the Apple TV, redirecting users to their phones is a much better user experience.

Twitter 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. And Facebook relies on the same usage flow with its new tvOS SDK.

Also coming today, Apple TV developers can integrate Crashlytics in their apps. This SDK lets you track crashes and various usage numbers. Crashlytics for tvOS was initially released as a beta last month. It is now available to everyone.

So there you have it. This is just a first step, and I’m sure Twitter is working on more tvOS SDK features. But getting Facebook and Twitter SDKs are important steps for Apple’s new platforms. Now let’s see if developers adopt these new SDKs.

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