Coronavirus: Apple changes Face ID so users don’t have to remove masks – By Sky New Staff (Sky News) / April 30 2020
The feature to assist COVID-19 protective measures was discovered by people using the latest developer version of iOS.
Apple has quietly introduced a new change to its Face ID feature so people wearing masks during the coronavirus pandemic don’t have to remove them to unlock their phones.
Face ID was introduced with the iPhone X, allowing users to unlock their iPhones using only their facial image instead of a fingerprint or a password.
However the face masks which have become so prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic are obscuring many of the details the iPhone uses to confirm identities.
As pointed out by @Sonikku_a2, if you’re wearing a mask, iOS 13.5 goes straight to the passcode screen if you try to unlock with Face ID (keypad not shown because iOS hides it in screen recordings) pic.twitter.com/bQCzu5u20p
— Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) April 29, 2020
Now, instead of fumbling around with the phone to try and access the passcode screen – which usually happens after Face ID fails to recognise a face multiple times – Apple is detecting if people are wearing a mask and automatically jumping them there.
Continue to article: https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-apple-changes-face-id-so-users-dont-have-to-remove-masks-11980992
