I experienced the EXACT same thing. I also have a very strong prescription, and because of this, I was actually holding my phone too close to my face when trying to use Face ID to unlock it. Try holding your phone farther away from your face at a typical distance. As soon as I did this, it worked every time!
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iPhone X Face ID and contact lenses
- Thread starter Brandthunder
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I experienced the EXACT same thing. I also have a very strong prescription, and because of this, I was actually holding my phone too close to my face when trying to use Face ID to unlock it. Try holding your phone farther away from your face at a typical distance. As soon as I did this, it worked every time!
So I’ve gotten used to the fact FaceID fails when I remove my contact lenses, which fortunately for me, is only once every two weeks. It’s still an inconvenience since it not only effects unlocking the phone, but also when loading passwords for various sites, such as just now, in order to post this comment. Apparently iOS 12 offers a remedy with the ability to load an alternate appearance into your FaceID profile. Must say I’m very surprised there are enough instances of varying appearances for Apple to include this feature. Most of the online comments about the new feature mention adding a second person’s face to your profile to allow them to use FaceID too. Regardless, I’m looking forward to no longer having to contend with this inconvenience.
Turn off Attention Awareness and Face ID ignores your eyes during the unlock process.
It seems as though any facial change contacts, glasses,will disable FaceID if it’s not scanned with them on in setting it up
Do one setup scan with your contacts in and one setup scan with your contacts out and you should be good to go either way
Do one setup scan with your contacts in and one setup scan with your contacts out and you should be good to go either way
That’s a good short term fix, but I’m still looking forward to iOS 12 so I can keep Attention Awesomeness on. Thanks for the suggestion, though.
Even with Attention Awareness off the probability of someone with your facial features unlocking your phone is over 1 in 500,000 vs. Touch ID whose odds were 1 in 50,000.
Unless you are sitting on nuclear secrets in your iPhone I highly recommend you just turn off Attention Awareness and enjoy your life. The photos of your pet rabbit simply aren't that compelling.
This Is an interesting point, because even though it appears its less secure with attention awareness disabled, I still find Face ID to be highly secure in the sense of not beingconcerned someone trying unlock my phone, unless somebody had highly similar facial features, which we know the probability of that is rare.
Agreed.
The odds that you run into your doppelgänger are incredibly small and then the fact that he turns out to be a petty thief?
Some people like to worry about nothing. Like complaining is a hobby or something.
[doublepost=1535803357][/doublepost]Same thing was happening to me too, until I realized that because I’m nearsighted I was holding the phone too close to my face when I was not wearing the contacts. If I move the phone away from my face a bit, it unlocks just fine.
FaceID works even I wear sunglasses. But it has difficulties when I'm not shaved week. So absolutly FaceID doesn't work like iris scanner.
TLDR: You're looking at it wrong.
FaceID works with or without contact lenses. It does require that the phone be a certain distance from your face. I have a similar strength prescription. Without my contacts, If I hold the phone close enough to my face to be able to read the screen, then it is too close to unlock. If I move it away a few inches it will get too blurry to read, but it will unlock.
Yes I do too! I suffer from keratoconus and wear hard contact lenses with a very strong prescription. -17 in the left eye. Same happens when I take my lenses out- Face ID stops working. Tried setting up a second Face ID which didn’t help. The lenses appear to be the critical factor.
Any assistance would be appreciated . I hope there is a work around.
Martin
I don't have an iPhone with faceid (yet... waiting for 2019 iPhones), but glad good to know that I'm in good company with shortsightedness (-10.5 for both eyes). My phone is always like an inch away from my face when I take off my contacts and am not wearing any glasses!
Why don’t you guys set an Alternate Appearance for when you’re not wearing lenses?
That feature is not exclusive to secret agents and drug lords on the run, you know
That feature is not exclusive to secret agents and drug lords on the run, you know
I dunno if there is some bug in the macrumours website, or people are just trying to boost the post count, or if it’s just me, but over the last couple of days I have been seeing a lot of posts where the person has only quoted another person and not left a comment of their own?
I also have a very strong prescription, I noticed that when I had my contacts out I was holding my phone too close to my face. When you go to unlock, hold it like you would when you have your contacts on, it will unlock, then move it closer to your face to interact with it after that.
So my girlfriend figured out why face recognition doesn’t seem to work when contacts are out. I had been having this issue for over a year and have been very frustrated thinking it was an apple issue. Turns out the phone is fine... it’s actually all of us nearsighted folks who are the problem. Last night as she watched me attempt to unlock my phone using face recognition, she told me, “you don’t need to see the phone, it needs to see you!” As I started to laugh, I decided to take a selfie at the distance I was holding the phone from my face to read the screen. Like most of the commenters here I am very near sighted. I was holding the phone 5 inches from my face so I could read the screen. When I looked at the selfie it only showed my forehead and one eyebrow. No wonder face recognition didn’t work!!! I held the phone out at normal distance and even though I couldn’t see anything on the screen, the phone recognized me and unlocked! Mystery solved!!!
As was said nearly 3 years ago: the problem is not the contacts. It’s the distance from your face to your phone.