Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

, introduced on June 3, 2019, at Apple's 2019

Worldwide Developers Conference The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is an information technology conference held annually by Apple Inc. The conference is currently held at Apple Park in California. The event is used to showcase new software and technologies in the macO ...

(WWDC) in

iOS 13 iOS 13 is the thirteenth major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple for the iPhone, iPod Touch and HomePod. The successor to iOS 12, it was announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June ...

Usage

It is designed to allow users to create accounts for third-party services with a minimal amount of personal information, only requiring the user to provide a name and email address. Users can opt for the email address associated with their

Apple Account Apple Account, formerly known as Apple ID, is a user account by Apple for their devices and software. Apple Accounts contain the user's personal data and settings, and when an Apple Account is used to log in to an Apple device, the device will a ...

or choose the "Hide My Email" option to generate a

disposable email address Disposable email addressing, also known as DEA, dark mail or masked email, refers to an approach that involves using a unique email address for each contact or entity, or using it for a limited number of times or uses. The benefit is that if the e ...

specific to the service; these addresses end in the privaterelay.appleid.com domain. Messages sent via a disposable (or relay) email address are automatically forwarded to a verified email address of the user's choice, and this function can also be disabled if needed. The service is compatible with the

OAuth OAuth (short for open authorization) is an open standard for access delegation, commonly used as a way for internet users to grant websites or applications access to their information on other websites but without giving them the passwords. Th ...

2.0 and

OpenID Connect OpenID is an open standard and decentralized authentication protocol promoted by the non-profit OpenID Foundation. It allows users to be authenticated by co-operating sites (known as relying parties, or RP) using a third-party identity provid ...

standards, and integrates with Face ID,

Touch ID Touch ID is an electronic fingerprint recognition feature designed and released by Apple Inc. History In 2012, Apple acquired AuthenTec, a company focused on fingerprint-reading and identification management software, for $356 million. The acq ...

and OpticID on

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

iPadOS iPadOS is a mobile operating system developed by Apple for its iPad line of tablet computers. It was given a name distinct from iOS, the operating system used by Apple's iPhones to reflect the diverging features of the two product lines, suc ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

and

visionOS visionOS is a mixed reality operating system derived primarily from iPadOS and its core frameworks (including UIKit, SwiftUI, ARKit and RealityKit), and MR-specific frameworks for foveated rendering and real-time interaction. It was develope ...

Usage in software development

social networking service A social networking service (SNS), or social networking site, is a type of online social media platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interest ...

platforms such as

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

, where such features may also grant the third-party service access to personal information tied to their account. On September 12, 2019, Apple updated the App Store Review Guidelines to stipulate that developers whose apps use at least one third-party login service must implement Sign in with Apple. It comes with exceptions for apps that function exclusively as a client for a specific service (such as the

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

app), that use a login service backed by a citizen identification system, or that are developed to work exclusively with a company's first-party login service. Apple's human interface guidelines require ''sign in'' with Apple buttons to be no less prominent than other sign-in services, and to appear "above the fold" without the user having to scroll. For use outside of iOS apps, Apple also offers a

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

library to implement Sign in with Apple on Android and the web.

Compliance with the OpenID standard

In October 2019, Apple made the service compliant with the

authentication standard. It had previously not been fully compliant, having for example excluded "Proof Key for Code Exchange" (PKCE)—the absence of which exposed users to possible replay attacks and code injection vulnerabilities.

References

{{Apple Apple Inc. services Federated identity