While the UK government hasn’t recommended that the general public start wearing face masks, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has suggested that doing so could become useful once the UK comes out of lockdown. For now, those who can get hold of masks are wearing them when shopping or if they need to do so for work – and there are a lot of people for whom a mask has become a significant part of their uniform.
One of the problems with wearing a mask – aside from sore ears from the loops – is that it makes unlocking your iPhone difficult if you rely on Face ID. This is a problem for all iPhone users from iPhone X onwards, as the newer generations rely on facial recognition instead of fingerprint recognition (not that fingerprint recognition is easy if you are wearing gloves).
An iOS update coming soon to iPhones will soon mean that you will be able to swipe upwards on the iPhone to dismiss the requirement for Face ID and instead unlock using your passcode. But while we await that update – and for those who don’t want to have to enter their passcode every time – how can you set your iPhone to unlock via Face ID if you have a mask on?
How to set iPhone to unlock with a mask on
Here we will share some tricks that will allow you to set up facial recognition on your iPhone so that it recognises you even with your face half covered by a mask. Before we run through the steps please note that we had to try this several times until we were able to set up reliable face recognition, but it is possible. (We have a guide to using Face ID here.)
Method 1:
- Fold your face mask in the middle and attach the two eyelets to the ear, hold the mask with one hand in your face so that it covers it exactly in the middle.
- On your iPhone go to Settings > Face ID & Passcode enter your passcode.
- Select the Set Up an Alternative Appearance option. (If you have already set up an alternative appearance you won’t have this option. You will need to reset your Face ID and set it up again.)
- You will be invited to set up Face ID. You may see a warning that your face is covered, but in our experience after a couple of tries this message will disappear.
- Follow the steps on screen to allow the True Depth camera to take its measurements and the circle appears guiding you to rotate your face in a circle.
- Wait while it takes the first scan of your face.
- Before the True Depth camera starts its second scans remove the mask and cover the other side of your face.
- Once the second scan is completed you should be able to unlock your iPhone while wearing a face mask.
Method 2:
If it doesn’t work for you our tip is to reset your Face ID and start again, but this time create your first Face ID scan while holding the mask on one side of your face.
Then create the Alternative Appearance option while holding the mask on the other side of your face.
When we used the second method – with involved creating our Face ID from scratch while covering our face on one side and then covering our face on the other side to do an Alternative Option – we found that Face ID was capable of unlocking our iPhone while we were wearing a mask.
When we used the first method – just creating the Alternative Appearance option with a mask – we found it to be less accurate. It tended to work if the tip of the nose was visible – if the nose was completely covered we found it to be unreliable.
This tip was identified by students in the Tencent Xuanwu Lab.
This story includes reporting from Macwelt.
