Apple Says Face ID Was Never Meant To Support Multiple Users

While Touch ID is meant to secure a phone against unwanted users gaining access to your phone, the way Touch ID was designed allowed users to create multiple fingerprint IDs. The idea presumably is to allow users to use different fingers to unlock their phones, but it also meant that you could create fingerprint profiles for different users.

An earlier report stated that Face ID could not support more than one user, but if you were wondering if Apple could increase this in the future, it doesn’t seem that way for now. In an email sent by Apple’s software engineering chief Craig Federighi posted on Reddit and has since been verified by MacRumors, Federighi confirms that Face ID was meant for single user authentication.

Federighi also confirms that Touch ID had a similar goal, and that the support for multiple finger registrations was so that users could unlock their iPhones using a thumb/finger with the same hand, not to enable multi-user authentication. However he doesn’t completely close the door on the possibility as he states that that Apple will consider the feedback for the future evolution of Face ID.

Whether or not this is a feature that Apple will take seriously remains to be seen, but what do you guys think? Should Face ID be expanded to support multiple users?

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Cellphones
Tags: face id, iPhone X, Security