‘signing into streaming accounts is a major pain’
Ryan Christoffel this week wrote for 9to5 Mac about an issue he described as Apple TV’s “biggest problem”: signing into streaming accounts. Apple, he said, is cognizant of the issue and is attempting to ameliorate things by building a new API for developers.
“If you’re a linear TV user, switching to an Apple TV 4K with streaming apps can require a huge learning curve. Different accounts, different apps and credentials, and of course entering those credentials on your TV,” Christoffel wrote. “Even for the most tech-savvy, it’s a clunky experience entering streaming app credentials using a TV remote.”
Apple’s new framework for tvOS 26, called Automatic Sign-In, is characterized by the company as “[letting] people sign in to your app once—on one device—and access it across each of their Apple devices,” adding the upshot of the API is it “eliminates the need to re-enter usernames and passwords, so people can enjoy your app seamlessly from any screen.” Obviously, the user-facing benefits are contingent upon companies such as ESPN, Hulu, and others actually adopting the API in the same way, for example, Netflix supports the native playback controls on tvOS rather a building a custom setup.
“You’ll be able to log in to Netflix once [with Automatic Sign-In] on your iPhone, then automatically get logged in on iPad, Apple TV 4K, and so on,” Christoffel said.
Many streaming services have, to their credit, offered QR codes to help expedite the sign-in process. I use this method occasionally, and it’s been fine if not ideal. While there is a cogent argument for the accessibleness of QR codes in presenting information to disabled people, Apple’s solution vis-a-vis its new Automatic Sign-In API should prove markedly more accessible. The idea behind it is conceptually identical to how, say, AirPods pairing works: do so once and it’ll spread across the galaxy, so to speak. Moreover, the framework is yet one more example of a de-facto accessibility feature; Christoffel rightly frames the problem as tedious and annoying and inconvenient, but as ever, it’s an accessibility issue too. The fact of manually signing in to each and every streaming service—even with QR codes in tow—can be an arduous journey for many in the disability community. It isn’t a trivial distinction because, as I often say, it’s the little things that end up making the biggest difference in shaping the overall user experience—good or bad. For those with disabilities, implementation details like sign-in can have an outsized effect on how someone can use a product.
In other words, there’s a thin line between convenience and accessibility.
Finally, here’s a tvOS tip for me that’s helped with accessibility. Thanks to Joe Rossignol at MacRumors, I recently learned it’s possible to change the keyboard layout from a linear view to a grid view. Having letters, numbers, et al, packed together in a compact space is much easier to maneuver; I prefer the grid view to the seemingly infinite expanse of the (default) linear view. (And of course, I use my iPhone as a keyboard too.)
