In the course of a few months, most of us have become accustomed to wearing face masks when we’re outside of our homes or businesses. If you own an iPhone X or 11, one thing is probably driving you slightly crazy about having to wear a mask — Face ID doesn’t recognize you. Trevor Tan, a reporter with the Straits Times of Singapore, outlined a simple method of setting up Face ID so it works with or without a mask, and I’m happy to say that it works!
The method was apparently developed by researchers at Tencent Xuanwu Lab, and it’s quite ingenious: it retrains Face ID by holding a folded mask in place touching the tip of the nose on one side of the face, then the other.
1) Launch Settings, then go to Face ID & Passcode. Tap “Reset Face ID“, then fold the face mask in half and hold it to one side of your face, just touching the tip of your nose. Remember the process you went through in setting up Face ID when you got your iPhone X or 11? You’ll go through that “head rotation” learning process again, only holding the mask in place on one side of your face as in the photo below:
Hopefully, these photos aren’t too traumatic to our readers — I haven’t been able to get a haircut and I’ve also given up shaving…
You will probably get a “part of your face is obscured” message from Face ID during this process — that’s normal, but it will let you finish scanning your face.
2) Now switch the face mask to the other side of your face, once again making sure that the mask only obscures the tip of your nose. You’ll go through the “head rotation” training process one more time.
At this point, your iPhone is set up to recognize your face when you are wearing a face mask.
3) Tap the “Set Up an Alternate Appearance” button (see image above), and go through the process again — without wearing the face mask. When you’re done, Face ID should recognize your face with or without the face mask.
This works, although it sometimes takes me two or three tries to get Face ID to recognize my masked face. At least it’s better than tapping in a passcode or worse — taking off my face mask to get Face ID to work!
If you find that it isn’t recognizing your masked face, go through the process again. Tan reported that it took him six tries to get things working properly — it only took me two times.
I think you asked for this article. It shows how you can modify face ID for wearing a mask.
Don
Isn’t the computer actually using a retinal ID for allowing access?
Face Id is not a retinal scan. It uses infrared to map 30,000 points on your face – creating a 3D depth-map of sorts. So presumably, having half of your face completely covered does not present enough data for the phone to authenticate.
Thanks Steve, gonna try this when I get back home later today!
Hi Steve,
Thanks for the tip. It took a few tries, but I finally got it to work. Actually had to do it in a reverse order, doing the face mask training as the alternate appearance, but it worked.
Very helpful, stay safe.
Can I set up the ultimate face ID to work with the mask rather than mess with my current main setting?
How does that apply to the fingerprint ID when wearing gloves?
Why limit the number of alternative appearances in the first place? My outdoor appearance with hat & sunglasses; CPAP appearance; normal appearance; and now mask appearance force difficult choices. Not to mention if I want to let my wife have access.