Last week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California released a ruling that concluded state highway police were acting lawfully when they forcibly unlocked a suspect’s phone using their fingerprint.
You can turn that and Face ID off on iOS by mashing the power button 5 times- it locks everything down.
I’ve always wanted a setting to create a lockdown key and an unlock key. So something like middle-finger to unlock but index-finger to force it into PIN/password only mode. So you can have some convenience of a quick unlock but if an authority figure asks or forces you to unlock it you can one-tap lock it down.
That would be awesome.
In GrapheneOS, a single wrong fingerprint disables fingerprint unlock until the password is entered.
That’s not correct. It just says not recognized, and let’s you try again. I just tested it. Do you have documentation that it should work the way you said and mine is faulty?
Sorry, I misremembered, it’s 5 times instead of 20: more secure fingerprint unlock
⚠️ WARNING: On android, mashing the power button 5 times calls emergency services…
On android you can add a ‘lockdown’ mode to the power menu.
Thanks for this, didn’t know this was an option.
on my phone lockdown mode is found by pressing side button and power up at the same time, then selection lockdown from the menu
There are two ways you can do this on Android currently, but they’re not as quick. You can try to unlock with the wrong finger 5 times and it will stop allowing fingerprint unlocks. Or, you can hold down the power button for 10 seconds and the phone will reboot and also disable fingerprint unlocking.
Not on my Pixel 6. 🤷♂️ It just does what I told it to do, namely to open the camera.
Edit: these are some Reddit down votes. I just didn’t know I had this feature, and I apparently have disabled it, but I don’t remember doing so. Oh well.
Cool, you disabled the gesture. Clearly the default SO setting doesn’t apply to you…
I didn’t even know it existed. I had to search to find the setting, but I see it exists on my phone and it’s disabled. I don’t recall disabling it though.
Have to tried? On my Samsung pressing twice does the camera (as I’ve set it to) but doing 5 times tries to call emergency services.
They disabled it . I don’t understand why they even commented. It reads like some weird flex
I don’t know how it sounds like a weird flex. I was just asking. I don’t remember if it was something you could disable or not from when I had my pixel 5.
Right, correcting your incorrect information is “weird flex”. What are you, five?
On my Mi Max 3 it does not work as well. In “configure buttons” section of menu there is no call emergency number action, neither is there press [any button] five times trigger available. So clearly the function your phone has is not universal. What a wild world do we live in!
Thank you for defending me. ❤️ They were correct though. Apparently I had the setting disabled, but I don’t remember doing so. Must have been years ago on another phone? And then carried over when settings migrated? I don’t know when this feature was introduced. But yeah. It’s a thing.
But obviously not universal if you don’t have it. Which Android version are you on?
Which Android version are you on?
10 qkq1.190910.002
I didn’t even know it existed. I had to search to find the setting, but I see it exists on my phone and it’s disabled. I don’t recall disabling it though.
It’s not a flex… 🙄 I was just confused about how it seemed so established that this was an “Android” feature, so should be activated on my phone too, but it isn’t. And now that I see I have the functionality disabled but people say it’s the default, I’m even more confused because I don’t remember even seeing this setting. 🤷♂️
I did, yeah. Gotta test before commenting, of course. I see I have the setting disabled for some reason. Don’t recall disabling it though.
Android has a similar feature. It’s called “Lockdown mode” on the shutdown menu. Locks the phone and turns off any biometric unlocks.
Except it doesn’t activate by mashing the power button 5 times. On my Pixel 8, that activates the emergency dialer that will automatically call 911 if you don’t cancel the prompt in 5 seconds. I did not know that before. Probably a better use for that feature. It also points out the different ideologies of Apple vs Android.
It does the same thing on iOS, but face/Touch ID is disabled after.
You can turn off the 911 “feature.” Don’t ask me how I know 😅