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We’re all required to wear face masks when we venture out of the house into the great ‘out there’.

At Paris Fashion Week, which happened before we were all locked down, Marine Serre kitted her models out with masks on the runway in an eery foreshadowing of things to come.

While masks are a necessary preventative measure, they can be a tad inconvenient. In what is a prime example of a First World Problem, if you own an iPhone, you’re probably having trouble unlocking it via facial ID.

Thankfully, Apple is always ahead of the game, and it’s coming to the rescue.

The Verge, with some good news for iPhone fans:

Apple’s latest beta version of iOS 13 comes with a much-needed improvement to lock screen authentication for those who now spend a majority of their time at work or outside wearing a face mask.

Now instead of waging a constant battle against your biometric software, you will be able to pull up the manual passcode option by swiping up from the bottom of the screen.

The change, which will eventually make its way to the standard, non-beta iOS release, is going to make things far easier for those returning to work during alert level 4.

It’s nice to see Apple make a fundamental change to how iOS authentication works, without undermining security, to accommodate the current predicament the world finds itself in.

In addition to the Face ID changes, Apple is also modifying FaceTime video calls to allow users to disable the feature where the active speaker grows larger in the asymmetric grid, in the event a static grid of faces is preferable for video calls with many people talking after one another. This will be an opt-in feature in the FaceTime settings, and once enabled, you’ll have to tap on a person’s feed to make it prominent in the grid.

While the iOS beta has yet to be released you have the option of shutting off face ID completely.

Hang in there, and check out the new (and very cool) iPhone SE, while you wait.

[source:verge]