Falcon Pro users have had a front-row seat to quite a bit of drama over the last few months. The events started when the app struck its 100,000 user token limit, which lead to the developer toreset user tokens in an effort to reallocate them to active users. Eventually, all of the tokens were consumed again, in part to the addition of multi-account support, and another "reset" was announced. It turns out that the plan was to quietly spread some people to a brand new API key. Unfortunately, Twitter blocked most users from signing in with the new key, and Joaquim Verge, the developer of Falcon Pro, pulled it from the Play Store until a better solution could be found.
Today, a new chapter in the story began as an announcement on the Falcon Pro Beta Testers community appeared stating that updates will now launch through the website getfalcon.pro, starting with v2.0.4. Also in the post was a hint about an "experiment" that would allow users who haven't acquired a valid token to still use the app with all of their accounts. A short time later,instructions to unlock the new feature were posted by Fernando González. As one might expect, the workaround allows users to create their own API key with Twitter and insert it into Falcon Pro. If you find yourself limited by the notorious token count, update your copy of the app and follow these steps:
On your device or computer:
- Visit https://dev.twitter.com and sign in (it doesn't matter what account you use for this step)
- Click on the "My applications" link in the dropdown under your picture.
- Click on "Create a new application"
- Fill in a unique name (you may have to try a few names before you get one that hasn't been claimed), a description, and URLs for the Website and Callback. It doesn't matter what URL you are using, but it must be correctly formed (http://something.com).
- Check the box to agree to the "Developer Rules Of The Road", fill out the captcha, and click the button to finish.
- Click on the "Settings" tab and change the Application Type to "Read, Write and Access direct messages," then click the Update button at the bottom of the page.
- Switch back to the "Details" tab and copy the values for "Consumer key" and "Consumer secret."
In Falcon Pro:
- Go to the login screen (logout if you're logged in)
- Tap all four corners to light up the squares (see screenshots), then tap the orange one (bottom left) to turn it back off.
- Shake your phone/tablet. Yes, really, start shaking it until a dialog box pops up saying "Custom login unlocked!"
- Tap on "Custom login"
- Fill in "Consumer Key" and "Consumer Secret" with the values you got from creating your Twitter API key. These are long, case-sensitive strings, so be careful to copy them precisely.
Needless to say, Twitter probably won't be happy about this turn of events. Fortunately for us, there isn't a lot the company can do without shutting down API access for all 3rd party clients or restricting new API keys. As more clients reach the dreaded token limit, this approach will probably become increasingly common. Hopefully, the powers that be will overlook this loophole or reconsider the policy all together.
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