These eight Face ID hidden features will make you an iPhone X power user.
Automatically Adjust Alarm Volume and Screen Brightness
As Face ID can tell when you’re looking at the screen, it can enhance some common iPhone features like using an alarm or adjusting the screen brightness. But first, you need to make sure the Attention Aware Features option is turned on. This introduces a couple of features:
If an alarm goes off and you look at the screen, the volume of the alarm will automatically decrease, as the phone knows it has your attention. The screen will not dim to save battery power when in use. Normally the screen automatically dims after a short period of time, but if the phone sees that you’re still using it, it will maintain brightness.
Receive Notification Previews Without Opening Notification Center
Normally, you would need to open Notification Center to see full previews of your notifications. With Face ID secure facial recognition, you can change your notification settings to give you full notification previews without opening Notification Center. Here’s how:
Autofill Passwords in Safari
With Face ID, your face is your password, and you can use that password to log into websites in Safari. If you store auto-fill usernames and passwords in Safari, Face ID can secure that data and verify it through facial recognition. Here’s how:
Control Which Apps Can Access Face ID
You may not want every app to have access to your Face ID data. (You can control which apps have access to other data as well.) Here’s how to adjust the Face ID access settings.
Quickly Disable Face ID
You can quickly disable Face ID at any time. This may be useful in situations where people are attempting to strong-arm you into unlocking your phone and revealing data. Here are two ways to turn off Face ID with simple button commands:
Press and hold the Side button and one or both of the volume buttons at the same time. This turns off Face ID and opens up the shut down/emergency calling screen. To unlock the phone, you will need to enter your passcode. Press the Side button 5 times in quick succession. This triggers the Emergency SOS feature, which also emits a loud alarm sound. Select Cancel on the Emergency SOS screen, then select Stop Calling to end the call and the siren. Face ID will also be turned off.
Disable Face ID With Siri
You can also use Siri to turn off Face ID. However, you must have to have Siri help enabled for this to work.
Make Face ID Unlock Faster
You can speed up the time it takes for Face ID to recognize you and unlock your iPhone.
Improve Face ID Accuracy
If Face ID doesn’t recognize you and the passcode screen appears, enter your passcode immediately. Face ID will take the scan of your face that it did not recognize and add it to the existing map of your face. Adding the new scan to the original improves its recognition abilities and allows for detection at odd angles or in low lighting. If Face ID often fails to identify you correctly, you may want to perform a new face scan. You can do this by going to Settings > Face ID & Passcode > Reset Face ID.
