Unlock with your face

Before using face matching

Keep in mind that:

  • Looking at your phone can unlock it, even when you don't intend to.
  • Your phone can be unlocked by someone who looks a lot like you.
  • Your phone can be unlocked by someone else if it’s held up to your face while your eyes are open. Keep your phone in a safe place. To prepare for unsafe situations, you can turn on lockdown.

Set up face matching

  1. Make sure you have set a screen lock on the phone.
  2. Go to Settings.
  3. Touch Security & location > Face recognition.
  4. Touch Add face data, then unlock your phone.
  5. Follow the onscreen instructions. Be sure to frame your entire face with the outline.

Whenever you turn on or wake the phone, it will search for your face and unlock when it recognizes you.

Unlock your phone

  1. Show your face to the lock screen.

    appears when the phone is looking for your face. When it recognizes you, it unlocks and displays .

  2. Swipe up.

If it doesn't recognize you, it stays locked and displays one of these icons.

Icon How to unlock
Use your password, PIN, or pattern
Use the fingerprint sensor

Turn off face matching

  1. Go to Settings.
  2. Touch Security & location > Face recognition.
  3. Do one of the following:

    • To turn it off but save your face data for later use, turn Quick unlock off .
    • To remove your face data, touch Delete face data. To use face matching again in the future, just set it up again.

Fix an issue

If you're having trouble getting the phone to recognize your face:

  1. Go to Settings.
  2. Touch Security & location > Smart Lock.

  3. Unlock your phone, then touch Trusted face.
  4. Touch Improve face matching.
  5. Follow the onscreen instructions.
  1. Go to Settings.
  2. Touch Security & location > Face recognition.
  3. Touch Delete face data.
  4. Touch Add face data and follow the onscreen instructions to re-register your face.