Apple iOS 14.5: How To Unlock Your iPhone Using Your Watch
How does the iOS 14.5 iPhone unlock feature work?
The secret to the new iOS 14.5 iPhone unlock feature is haptic feedback, the same tech that allows you to open your MacBook using your Apple Watch. It’s intuitive and easy to use, but there are several criteria that need to be met to take advantage of the feature.
If you want to open your iPhone in this way, you need to enable a passcode on your Apple Watch. You will only have to enter this when you put your Apple Watch on for the first time each day (unless you take it off at any point). At the same time, for the sake of security, you’ll also need to enable the Apple Watch wrist detection feature.
You can’t use this new iOS 14.5 feature to pay for things on your iPhone, but you don’t need to, as you can use your Apple Watch for that anyway.
How do set up Unlock with Apple Watch to open my iPhone when out and about?
The first thing you need to do when it arrives is make sure your iPhone is running iOS 14.5 and your Apple Watch is on WatchOS 7.4.
Open up your iPhone Settings > Face ID & Passcode and enter your PIN.
Then scroll down to Unlock with Apple Watch and look for your device. There you will find a toggle, which you can slide to “On” to ensure the feature is enabled. Simple.
The next time you are out, hold your iPhone up to your face and it will detect you are wearing a mask. You’ll then feel a little vibration on your wrist as your Apple Watch satisfyingly opens your iPhone. This vibration is a security feature too—it brings up an option to quickly lock your phone in case someone is trying to open it without your permission.
Is it as secure as Face ID?
As I mentioned, there are safeguards in place to stop any unauthorized unlocking of your iPhone in iOS 14.5. It’s not as secure as Face ID and not as secure and convenient as Touch ID, which missed the iPhone 12 feature set when it launched last year but will hopefully be back this Fall.
However, the trade-off is worth it. “Sure, opening your phone with your Apple Watch can increase risk, but I consider this very small,” says Sean Wright, SME application security lead at Immersive Labs. “You can already open your phone, at least on Android, in a similar way with a Bluetooth device.”
The iPhone Unlock feature is one of Apple’s iOS 14.5’s many game-changing new features. The most significant iPhone privacy feature coming this week is App Tracking Transparency (ATT), which hurts the likes of Facebook by letting you stop ad tracking on your device.
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