Netflix and the eight slots at netflix.com/tv2

Netflix’s code page contains, in its first sentence, the best short explanation of how the square code on a TV screen relates to the typed code. The page says confirm or enter: confirm, when the square code was scanned and brought the code along; enter, when the address was typed by hand.

That is the internet standard’s two verification addresses — one bare, one with the code embedded — made visible on a single page.

What happens on each side

A Netflix app on a TV or streaming device prints the address netflix.com/tv2 (netflix.com/atv on an Apple TV box) and an eight-character code in two groups of four, alongside a square code. Netflix’s own page on signing in describes the square-code route as pointing a phone camera at the screen, tapping the link that appears and choosing Sign in to TV. The link the camera reads is the same page as the typed address, with the code already inside it — which is why the page then only has to be confirmed.

Typed by hand, the address opens a page on netflix.com headed Match the code on your TV, with eight slots in two groups of four and a Continue button. Netflix’s account sign-in follows on the same domain. Nothing on the page concerns billing; the plan, the payment method and the extra-member settings live in the account area, not on the code page.

Netflix also offers routes that involve no typed code at all. Choosing Use Remote on the TV asks for the account’s e-mail address or phone number and then offers to send a sign-in link — opening the link on a phone signs the TV in — or to take the password on the remote. Netflix’s page notes that only the primary account credentials work on the TV, not those of an extra member.

A separate four-digit code exists in Netflix’s world and is easily mixed up with the TV code: the one Netflix e-mails or texts when someone signs in on a phone or computer without a password. Netflix says that code lasts fifteen minutes. It is never printed on a TV and never entered at netflix.com/tv2.

Easily confused with

• Addresses that move tv2 or tv8 in front of the name (tv2-netflix.example, netflixtv8.example). Netflix’s registrable name is netflix.com; the number sits after the slash.
• A page with a field for the code and, beside it, a field for card details. Netflix’s code page has eight slots and a Continue button; billing is elsewhere.
• The fifteen-minute four-digit code from an e-mail or text, which belongs to phone and computer sign-ins, not to the TV.

Range

Devices on which this code sign-in appears, as named on the service’s own pages: