I was never fond of Touch ID. It never worked right for me. On the other hand, Face ID always worked well. (I don’t have an Apple watch.) I consider having to manually enter the code when I’m wearing a mask just a little inconvenience and not a dealbreaker.
Not 100% true. The iris of your eye is as unique as your fingerprint. So it is possible but maybe the iPhone doesn’t have the required resolution. Or Apple could bring back TouchID
Thanks for your reply Adam, I was aware of this, but since I have zero interest in owning an Apple watch (even large phones are too small for me). I’ll have to pass on an additional purchase just to restore a previously free feature & hope that the need for masks will eventually wane.
We can always hope, but it seems unlikely that Apple will bring Touch ID back in a big way, especially to devices that already have Face ID, because the cost (in both added components and design restrictions like smaller screens) is just too high. The lower end devices will probably keep Touch ID for a while as a way of differentiating them in the product line.
Rumor is that there will be an iPhone SE-2022 coming in March, which will retain the existing (iPhone 8-based) form factor, strongly implying that Touch ID will also be used.
I changed back from 6-digit passcode to 4.
Probably not a big deal to only have 4… ut rather than choose the 4 option choose the more option and then only set 4…that makes you hit Ok after the last digit but the bad guy then doesn’t know it’s only 4.
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Oh, I didn’t know that, re the 6 but really 4. Thanks!
Of course, you don’t have to use digits.
EXCUSE ME???
If you read the “right” news sources, you’ll “learn” that “they” (the “One World Government Baby Eaters”) have been thwarted by the Qanons, whose “research” has "established that 5G cellular technology is just a hoax that enables a “special” kind of facial recognition that REQUIRES masking AND injection of nanobots (delivered by the mRNA vaccines) to enable it.
Of course, none of that is anything but nonsense, but it’s absolutely incredible what percentage of our population believes it, including some of my own close relatives.
How can you set it to only use 4 digits on the set-up for 6-digit entry? I don’t see any way except enter 6 digits or Cancel.
BD
You can’t, but when you set up the passcode, there is a passcode options at the bottom that lets you use one called custom numeric, where you could set up a 4 (or 5, or - better - something like 10) digit passcode. Using custom numeric requires you to hit a “done” button on the display to tell the phone that you’ve finished entering the passcode.
But customs numeric is good because there is no indication how many digits are in the passcode at the entry screen. The hard coded 6 or 4 digit passcode makes it clear to anyone picking up your phone how many digits long your passcode is.
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Apparently yes.
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Finally! 
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Great!
Last Monday my wife and I finally got Face ID phones. Then Saturday our 3yo got Covid, so in an attempt to protect ourselves we spent Saturday evening and Sunday wearing masks around the house and entering our passcodes a LOT. (Monday morning we both tested positive so there wasn’t much point to continued masking at home and we haven’t been going anywhere.)
Fortunately everyone seems to be on the mend and nothing was too severe.
Dave
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And before too many people get their hopes up, apparently this is available only on iPhone 12 and 13. Not really a huge surprise considering the massive performances advances realized in A14 in terms of ML (Neural Engine and AMX blocks).
Edit: confirmed.
Too bad it is only beta. I have a 12 but I quit the beta program since Apple offers no suoport. If some beta bug bricks you phone, Apple will not help you. Too risky.
Plus if your phone is in the beta program and you buy a newer phone you cannot transfer your data from the phone in the beta program to the new phone that isn’t in the beta program.
And lastly I got really tired of submitting a lot of feedback to Apple and never hearing anything back from them and it’s like I feel like I’m doing their work for them.
They just don’t fix things that are broken and a lot of it is because the way Apple software engineers are divided up into individual silos based on operating system and they don’t talk to each other.
Apple Pay will also support masked Face ID.
Not all beta features make the stable release, but they almost always do. If the feature makes stable, we should see it in a few weeks.
How is it going to work? I wear different types of masks and then sometimes I have readers on. The face id works with readers or without but I feel like I’m a hot mess with a mask!
Diane