Apple should rethink Face ID settings for our current era

Through no fault of Apple, Face ID is having a moment — and not in a good way.

Sure, the biometric security feature works as well as it ever does, using a face scan to unlock your iPhone, confirm mobile payments and generally an extra layer of protection between your digital data and the prying eyes of the outside world.

But we live in a time of increasing unrest, and with it comes a concern about biometric security features in general. Run afoul of what purports to be law-and-order these days, and your own face can be used against you by police who can compel you to use Face ID unlocking against your will. A security writer at PC Mag goes so far as to suggest you should stop using Face ID entirely.

I’m not sure I want to take that drastic a step with my own iPhone. While concerns about biometric locks are certainly valid, I find Face ID pretty convenient to use when I’m out and about and my phone remains firmly in my possession. Glancing at my iPhone to unlock is certainly quicker than tapping out a passcode every time, and I like using Face ID to lock down everything from health data in my health care provider’s app to images I’ve got stashed in separate Photos folders.

That said, when I attend a protest (and it seems like I’m showing up at a lot of those lately), I do disable Face ID before heading out. The protests I’m attending haven’t ever gotten out of hand, but better safe than sorry, I reckon. While there’s not much stopping law enforcement from making you use your face or thumbprint to unlock a device, you aren’t compelled to share your passcode if you’re detained.

Turning off Face ID requires you to dive into the Settings app, tapping the Face ID & Passcode menu and then entering in that passcode when prompted. Only then can you toggle off the feature. And while that’s simple enough to do, it’s not a feature you can turn off discreetly or quickly should you remember that Face ID is enabled as someone’s approaching you with ill intent.

There’s a shortcut of sorts: Just press and hold the side button on the right side of your iPhone at the same time you press and hold the volume-up button. iPhone veterans will recognize this as the button combo that brings up the Slide to Power Off command, which is exactly what will happen. As a neat bonus feature, you’ll even get some haptic feedback to let you know that the Slide to Power Off screen has appeared, allowing you to discreetly pull off this manuever without even looking at your phone. (You can also tap the sleep/wake button five times.)

“But I just want to shut down Face ID, not power off my iPhone,” you may be saying. And my friend, shutting down Face ID is exactly what you’ve just done.

Tap the Cancel button on the Slide to Power Off Screen, and you’ll bring up your phone’s lock screen. Only now, the only way to unlock your iPhone is to enter a passcode. Face ID remains disabled until the next time you unlock your phone, giving you some measure of protection from having the Face ID feature used against you.

Apple should do more

As a workaround, the Slide to Power Off move will do in a pinch. But I’d like there to be an even easier way to turn off Face ID, whether that’s through a Shortcut or with the help of Siri.

Poking around the built-in Shortcuts app on the iPhone, you can find pre-populated controls for silencing your phone, adjusting connectivity or the iPhone’s display, and more. But if there’s a way to quickly access the Face ID & Passcode menu in the Settings app, I couldn’t find it. (You can use Shortcuts’s Open URL action and the URL pattern prefs:root=PASSCODE to create an action that opens it, but you’ll still need to enter your password and flip the switch manually.) Likewise, there’s no tappable shortcut in the Control Center, which would seem like a natural place for a quick on-screen way to turn off Face ID. (You could even put the shortcut right there on the lock screen now that we’re firmly living in the brave new world of iOS customization.)

Likewise, Siri is no help when it comes to handling Face ID management. In the current version of iOS 26, a simple “Turn off Face ID command” will have Siri apologetically telling you that it doesn’t understand what you’re talking about. Perhaps that could be some of the smarts Siri is supposed to pick up in a coming update to iOS 26.

And really, this is the sort of thing Apple should add. The company makes the privacy features of its products a central part of the case for why you should buy Apple, with most of the recent TV spots focusing on keeping your browsing data private. But I would contend an even bigger privacy concern would be having everything that’s stored on your iPhone—text messages, emails, photos—made available on command to a some mask-wearing federal agent just because you’re using a biometric feature as intended.

The central role that phones play in our lives coupled with uncertain times at home and abroad have people rethinking how they should approach Face ID. Apple needs to be doing the same.