You can now unlock your iPhone with Face ID while wearing a mask: Talking Tech podcast

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Hey there listeners. It's Brett Melina. Welcome back to Talking Tech. If you're familiar with the iPhone, especially some of the newer models, then you likely know about Face ID. And one of the big hurdles with using face ID in the last couple years has been when you're wearing a mask. Obviously with the pandemic, we had to wear masks out and about. And if you try to unlock your phone with Face ID, it didn't really work. That has now changed, which is just in time as a lot of us seem to be shedding our masks, but here we go. Apple rolled out an update on Monday for the iPhone. It supports a feature on face ID that would allow users to unlock their phone even if they have their mask on. I write about this in a story that you can on tech.USAtoday.com.

The iOS 15.4 Update will work if you have an iPhone 12 or newer smartphone Apple said. So iPhone 12, iPhone 13, basically. After the update users get a prompt, basically asking them if they want to use Face ID while wearing a mask, then they go through the process of scanning their face without a mask on, and then they're good to go. If you didn't have Face ID enabled, you'll get a request saying, "Do you want to enable face ID?" The way it worked for me is on my phone, I didn't have it enabled. So I asked to have it turned on. I had my face scanned. Then I got the prompt that talked about, "Do you want to use this while you have a mask on?" I agreed to that too, and then I did a second scan and then everything's all set. And then you're good to go. And then once enabled you unlock with Face ID while wearing a mask.

I tried this a couple times, works again fairly well. Had a mask on, held my phone up. It recognized me, unlocked. I was good to go. So really quick and easy, really easy to set up. And again, really easy to use. Before this update though, the only way you could unlock if you had a mask on with an iPhone is if you had an Apple Watch. So what would happen is with the Apple Watch, if you have it enabled, if you had your phone and you were looking at it, what it would do is the watch would recognize you. And then you'd hear a buzz on your watch and then your phone would unlock. So basically your watch is unlocking your phone for you. Again, really cool features. Some other things that are coming with this update to iOS is new emoji. There's also an additional voice option for Siri, but obviously being able to unlock your phone while wearing a mask is a pretty big thing.

The timing of this of course is a little awkward because some of us are probably ditching our face masks right now. But for those of us that are still wearing our face masks and you own an iPhone, this is definitely something you have available to you as an option. You can read more about this by going to tech.USAtoday.com. Listeners, let's hear from you. Do you have any comments, questions, show ideas, any tech problems you want us to try to address? You can find me on Twitter @BrettMelina23. Please don't forget to subscribe and rate us or leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, anywhere you get your podcasts. You've been listening to Talking Tech. We'll be back tomorrow with another quick hit from the world of tech.