When this feature kicks in, you always get a wrist notification telling you it happened, with just one button: “Lock iPhone”. I’d say less than 1 meter - pretty much about what you would think the maximum distance would be between a watch on one wrist and an iPhone in the other hand. My iPhone will unlock if my wife or son is the face in front of my iPhone - but only if they’re wearing a mask, and only if my Apple Watch is very close to the phone. It’s not trying to do a half-face check that your eyes and forehead look like you, or anything like that. It’s important to note that in step #2, it works with any face wearing a mask. Regular Face ID is so fast you forget it’s even there “Unlock With Apple Watch” is slow enough that you notice it’s there, but fast enough that it isn’t a bother. But it works more than fast enough to be a pleasant convenience experience. The notification sent to the watch includes a button to immediately lock the iPhone.īecause it’s a two-step process (step #1 first, then step #2), it does take a bit longer than Face ID without a mask (which is really just step #1). the watch itself is unlocked and on your wrist) and very close to the iPhone? If so, unlock, and send a notification to the watch stating that the watch was just used to unlock this iPhone. If Face ID fails, is there a face wearing a mask in front of the phone? If so, is an authorized Apple Watch in a secure state (i.e. Normal non-mask Face ID is unchanged when this feature is enabled. is the face in front of the phone you, the owner, and are you not wearing a mask? If so, unlock normally. It’s easy to turn on in Settings on your iPhone: go to Face ID & Passcode, enter your passcode, and scroll down to the “Unlock With Apple Watch” section, where you’ll find toggles for each Apple Watch (running WatchOS 7.4 or later) paired with your iPhone.ĭoes Face ID work normally? I.e. It’s optional (as it should be), and off by default (also as it should be, for reasons explained below). “Unlock With Apple Watch” eliminates almost all of that annoyance. The longer your passcode, the more secure it is (of course), but the more annoying it is to enter incessantly. Every single time you unlocked your phone, you needed to enter the passcode/passphrase. Prior to iOS 14.5, using a Face ID iPhone while wearing a face mask sucked. As the designated errand runner in our quarantined family, it’s a game changer. If anything, I think iOS 14.5 is very stable technically, and only volatile politically, with the new opt-in requirement for targeted ad user tracking.Īfter using this feature for a few weeks now, I can’t see going back. The x.1 releases are usually the stable ones, and the releases after that tend to be very stable in beta - Apple uses these releases to fix bugs and to add new features that are stable. Over the summer, between WWDC and the September (or October) new iPhone event, iOS releases can be buggy as hell. But I think the later we go in OS release cycles, the more stable the betas tend to be. Your mileage may vary, and running a beta OS on your daily-carry devices is always at your own risk. So far, for me, these OS releases have been utterly reliable.
#Unlox for apple watch install
But the new “Unlock With Apple Watch” feature, which kicks in when you’re wearing a face mask, was too tempting to resist.įirst things first: to use this feature, you need to install iOS 14.5 on your iPhone and WatchOS 7.4 on your Apple Watch (both of which are, at this writing, on their second developer betas). In fact, I don’t generally install beta versions of iOS, at least on my main iPhone.
I don’t generally write about features in beta versions of iOS. How ‘Unlock With Apple Watch’ While Wearing a Face Mask Works in iOS 14.5 Sunday, 21 February 2021
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