The FaceID facial recognition system is one of the safest on the market right now, thanks to the technology it incorporates. However, despite its strengths, this can be even more secure, thanks to two settings that we are going to introduce you to in this post. We are also going to show you some additional settings with which to further increase the presence of FaceID on your device.
The iPhone knows when you look at the camera
FaceID works by scanning the face, creating a map in depth thanks to thousands of invisible points of light that the TrueDepth camera emits towards our face. Along with these points of light, it is also capable of knowing when we are looking at the phone. And it is precisely this last fact that makes FaceID more secure.
If we make the iPhone know when we are looking at the camera, the FaceID system will not activate to verify our identity if we are not paying attention to the device. Hence, if we are in a bad position, with our eyes closed or accidentally turn on the screen, the phone will not unlock unless we are fully aware that we want to carry out that action.
In this way, as we say, we can prevent unwanted unlocking, and thus increase the security of our phone. To carry out this we will have to go to Settings> FaceID and code. In that category we will have to look for a section called Attention, in which we will see two settings. The first of them is Require attention for FaceID. If we activate it, the iPhone will act as we have explained just before. Although we must also bear in mind that, sometimes, we may not be looking completely directly at the phone, or we may be in a place with complicated lighting, and the camera may not focus well on us.
The second setting we show you is called Attention detection. This one is located just below the first one that we have mentioned before. Here the function of looking at the camera does not apply for unlocking, but it does for certain functions. One of them is when we have the screen locked and a notification appears. In order to see the content of this with the locked screen, FaceID will require that we are looking at the camera, in order to prevent it from being shown accidentally. In the same way, this happens with the dimming of the screen and with elements that require a more direct interaction with us.
Extend the presence of FaceID
FaceID security also goes through the areas in which we want the system to be activated, for when we want to perform certain tasks with the phone. Within Settings> FaceID and code, we are going to have to look at a section called Use FaceID for. Here we are going to see the following functions to which we can apply this verification system:
- Unlock iPhone (the essential function)
- Purchases and downloads of applications and content
- Using the wallet and making payments with Apple Pay
- Autofill passwords
- Access content within apps
