Skip to main content

Spotify, Venmo, and other iOS apps went down because of a Facebook SDK

The new Facebook software development kit wreaked havoc on a number of iOS apps for over an hour on Wednesday — causing them to crash for hundreds of thousands of users.

According to users on Twitter and GitHub, the new software development kit, or SDK, caused a range of apps to crash  — including major apps like Venmo, Waze, Spotify, and more. The SDK essentially allows those apps to connect to Facebook and use some of its features, like allowing users to log in using their Facebook account. Thankfully, the issue seems to have now been fixed.

DownDetector reported huge upticks in crashes on many major apps, including Spotify, TikTok, Tinder, Viber, and more. Based on tweets, it seems as though the Spotify app had been down for almost two hours starting at 3 p.m. PT.

The issue itself simply caused apps to crash right after opening — essentially rendering them useless. While there were unofficial workarounds, like blocking the “facebook.com” domain in a router’s DNS settings, those fixes were complicated and wouldn’t work when not connected to Wi-Fi.

The Facebook SDK essentially allows users to be able to sign on to an app through Facebook — but even people who don’t use Facebook to sign in to apps and services may still have been affected. That’s because the apps still have that feature as an option, and as such still include the Facebook SDK code.

Facebook has yet to respond with a comment, but we’ve reached out to the company, along with the developers of many of the major affected apps, and will update this story when we hear more.

List of apps that were affected by the Facebook SDK

A number of major apps seem to have been affected by the issue, including some of the most popular apps out there. Here’s a list of some of the apps that we could confirm weren’t working, though it’s likely that many more were affected too.

  • Spotify
  • Venmo
  • TikTok
  • Pinterest
  • Waze
  • Calm
  • Postmates
  • Viber

Editors' Recommendations

Christian de Looper
Christian’s interest in technology began as a child in Australia, when he stumbled upon a computer at a garage sale that he…
Here are the 7 new emoji coming to your iPhone with iOS 18
2024 emoji.

It's that time of year again! The Unicode Consortium has released a preview of new emoji that will likely be included in a version of iOS 18 later this year or early next year. It will be up to Apple to officially add them to the next iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, and visionOS versions.

The new emoji announced today include ones for a sleepy face, fingerprint, leafless tree, vegetable root, harp, shovel, and splatter. The emoji examples provided by Unicode serve as starting points for Apple designers to create finished designs and are not the final images Apple will use. Google and other platform users will also work with these emoji as a starting point.

Read more
iOS 17.5 just launched with a huge security feature for your iPhone
Apple iPhone 15 Plus and Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max seen from the back.

Apple iPhone 15 Plus (left) and Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

Apple has just released the iOS 17.5 update for iPhones, which brings a host of new features. For European Union residents, it enables Web Distribution, which means you can sideload apps from the internet and won’t be limited to the App Store.

Read more
A big iPhone update is right around the corner
An iPhone 15 Pro Max sitting upright, showing one of its home screens.

With announcements for 2024 models of the iPad Air and iPad Pro, today's been a busy day of Apple news. But the iPad isn't the only Apple product in the news today. Following the big announcements from its event earlier this morning, Apple also shared some important news regarding the next iPhone update.

As of Tuesday, May 7, Apple has begun rolling out RC builds for iOS 17.5. RC stands for "Release Candidate," and it's the last beta version of a software update that Apple releases before its final public rollout. In other news, the official iOS 17.5 update should be right around the corner.

Read more