Face unlock for MacBooks
that have no Touch ID

Look at your Mac and the lock screen opens.
A menu bar app that recognizes your face and types your password for you.
It all runs on the machine — your face never leaves your Mac.

Download the DMG ▶︎ Watch the install guide View source on GitHub

Free · MIT · macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon · not notarized, so macOS will ask twice

The whole interaction

Four steps, about a second and a half. Nothing to press.

  1. You walk up to a locked Mac. The camera is already warm — it starts streaming the moment the screen locks.
  2. It recognizes you. Vision finds the face, ArcFace turns it into 512 numbers, and those are compared against the faces you registered.
  3. You blink. A printed photo can't do this. It's the reason a picture of you doesn't open your Mac.
  4. The lock screen opens. Your password is decrypted inside the Secure Enclave and typed for you.

What it is, and what it isn't

The name is close to Apple's. The thing is not. Both columns are worth reading before you install it.

What it does

  • Opens the macOS lock screen when the camera recognizes you.
  • Runs entirely on your Mac. No account, no server, no telemetry.
  • Seals your password with the Secure Enclave. Copy it to another Mac and it becomes unreadable.
  • Works with any camera — built in, or an external webcam you pick in Settings.
  • Builds without Xcode. A Makefile and swiftc.

What it is not

  • Not Apple's Face ID. A 2D webcam can't measure depth. Face ID reads 30,000 infrared dots; this sees one flat image.
  • It stops photos, not videos. A recording of you blinking, played on a phone, will open it. That needs a depth sensor, so it won't be fixed.
  • It doesn't cover the FileVault boot screen. No app runs there.
  • Your password must stay decryptable. It has to be usable from the lock screen, so it can't sit behind another secret.
  • It's a convenience, not a security control. Treat it as one.

Install

Two ways. The second one is the honest recommendation.

▶︎ Watch the install guide

A screen recording of the whole thing, start to finish, if you'd rather follow along than read.

From the DMG

  1. Open the DMG and drag FaceUnlock to Applications.
  2. Right-click 설치 도우미 (Install Helper).command → Open. macOS blocks it. Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway, then do it again.
  3. Let the Terminal window finish. It clears the quarantine flag, downloads and converts the face model, and launches the app.
Being blocked twice is normal — the app isn't notarized, because notarization needs a paid Apple Developer account. Going through that dance for an unsigned app from a stranger is a genuinely risky habit. If you'd rather not, build it yourself. That's why the source is public.

From source

# macOS 14+, Apple Silicon, Command Line Tools
git clone https://github.com/KINN-CH/FaceUnlock.git
cd FaceUnlock
make model      # converts the ArcFace model to Core ML
make install && open -a /Applications/FaceUnlock.app

The face model isn't in the repo and isn't in the DMG. The ArcFace weights are under InsightFace's non-commercial research license, so they're fetched from the official release at install time.

How it works

Every stage runs locally, on the Neural Engine or the CPU.

camera frame→ Vision face detect→ align to 112×112→ ArcFace 512-d→ cosine match→ blink check→ type password

Registered faces are stored as embeddings — 512 numbers — not as pictures. They're sealed with a key that only exists inside this Mac's Secure Enclave, in ~/Library/Application Support/FaceUnlock/.

The only thing that ever leaves the machine is an optional once-a-day check for a new release: one unauthenticated GET to GitHub, which sees your IP address and nothing else. It exists because v0.1.0 through v0.1.4 shipped a bug that left the camera black on the lock screen, and there was no way to reach the people running them. Settings → Updates turns it off, and with it off no request is made at all.

Does it work on your MacBook?

This has been properly verified on exactly one machine — the one it was written on. Whether it works anywhere else is the thing its author most wants to know. If you try it, a one-line report either way is genuinely useful.

Tell us on Discussions Star it on GitHub

한국어

맥북 잠금 화면을 얼굴로 여는 메뉴바 앱입니다. 카메라가 얼굴을 알아보면 잠금 화면을 대신 풀어줍니다. Touch ID 없는 맥북을 쓰다가 직접 만들었습니다.

모든 처리가 맥 안에서 끝납니다. 계정도, 서버도, 수집도 없습니다. 등록한 얼굴은 사진이 아니라 512개의 숫자로 저장되고, 이 맥의 Secure Enclave 안에만 있는 키로 봉인됩니다.

애플의 Face ID 가 아닙니다. 웹캠은 깊이를 재지 못합니다. 눈 깜빡임을 확인하기 때문에 인쇄된 사진으로는 열리지 않지만, 깜빡이는 영상을 휴대폰으로 재생하면 열립니다. 깊이 센서 없이는 해결되지 않아 고칠 계획이 없습니다. 편의 기능이지 보안 장치가 아닙니다.

FileVault 부팅 화면은 다루지 못합니다. 로그인 이후의 잠금 화면만 해당됩니다.

공증을 받지 않아 설치할 때 macOS 가 두 번 막습니다. 정상입니다. 내키지 않으시면 소스에서 직접 빌드하시면 됩니다 — 저장소를 공개해 둔 이유입니다.

설치 과정을 처음부터 끝까지 화면 녹화해 두었습니다. 글로 읽는 것보다 따라 하는 게 편하시면 설치 가이드 영상을 보세요.

한국어 문서 전문 →