plasma-face-unlock

plasma-face-unlock

Face ID for KDE Plasma.

Look at the screen and it unlocks: the lock screen, sudo and admin prompts. A photo on a phone does not fool it.

Install | How to use | Is it safe? | Report a bug

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The bubble drops down over the lock screen, the face in it looks around, and two green rings spin and land around a tick

The bubble above the lock screen: looking, recognised, not recognised

Come back to your locked screen and look at it. A bubble drops down at the top, finds your face, and you are in. It works for `sudo` and Plasma's admin prompts too, if you want. Everything runs on your computer, and your face is saved as numbers, never as a picture. ## Install **Arch, CachyOS, EndeavourOS, Manjaro** (AUR) ```bash yay -S plasma-face-unlock ``` **Fedora** ```bash sudo curl -fsSL -o /etc/yum.repos.d/plasma-face-unlock.repo \ https://loonixtools.github.io/plasma-face-unlock/plasma-face-unlock.repo sudo dnf install plasma-face-unlock ``` **Debian, Kubuntu** ```bash codename="$(sed -n 's/^VERSION_CODENAME=//p' /etc/os-release)" sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings curl -fsSL https://loonixtools.github.io/plasma-face-unlock/KEY.gpg \ | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/plasma-face-unlock.gpg echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/plasma-face-unlock.gpg] https://loonixtools.github.io/plasma-face-unlock/deb/$codename ./" \ | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/plasma-face-unlock.list sudo apt update && sudo apt install plasma-face-unlock ``` The packages are built for the current release of each. Updates then come with your normal system updates. You need Plasma 6 on Wayland and a camera. Infrared cameras (the Windows Hello kind) work too. ## How to use ```bash plasma-face-unlock ``` This opens a menu:

The plasma-face-unlock menu in Konsole: face unlock on, one face, lock screen, sudo and admin prompts on

Press **1** and follow the setup window: look at the camera, then turn your head slowly in a circle until the ring is full. Then lock the screen and look at it. **2** adds another face, for example with glasses, and **5** runs one test scan that shows what the camera sees. Try that first when something does not work. **4** opens the settings. The text at the bottom says what the selected one does:

The settings in Konsole, grouped into lock screen, password prompts, recognition and bubble, with the photo check explained at the bottom

Without the menu: `plasma-face-unlock enable`, `disable`, `setup [NAME]`, `faces`, `remove ID`, `test` and `status`. ## Is it safe? It is a convenience, not a security upgrade. Face ID on a phone sees your face in 3D. A webcam only sees a flat picture. - You do not have to blink. A photo on a phone or tablet, or a glossy print, is still refused: it gives itself away by its reflection and its straight edges. - A matte printed photo can get past that. Set the photo check to *strict* in the settings: then the face has to blink or turn a little, and a photo can do neither. - A video of you can still get in. - Five failed tries in a row pause it for 15 minutes, or until you use your password. - Only root can read your face data. Adding or deleting a face always needs your password. - sudo and admin prompts never take a face over SSH. If the computer guards something important, leave sudo and admin prompts off. ## How it works | | | |---|---| | `plasma-face-unlockd` | Runs as root when needed. It owns the camera and the face data and decides. | | `plasma-face-unlock-agent` | Runs in your session. It watches the lock screen and draws the bubble. | | `pam_plasma_face_unlock.so` | Lets sudo and admin prompts ask the daemon. No match: you type your password as usual. | | `plasma-face-unlock` | The menu. | Two small networks from the OpenCV model zoo find the face (YuNet) and turn it into numbers (SFace). They run on the CPU in a few milliseconds. The lock screen is unlocked through logind, the same way `loginctl unlock-session` does it. `man plasma-face-unlock` has all the details. ## Build from source ```bash make models # downloads the two networks and checks them make make test sudo make install ``` You need CMake, a C++20 compiler, Qt 6, LayerShellQt, KI18n, OpenCV 4.5.4 or newer (with DNN), Linux-PAM and libsystemd. `scdoc` and `msgfmt` are optional (man page, translations). [packaging/README.md](packaging/README.md) explains releases. ## Credits - [Glance](https://github.com/jonnyoo/glance) by Jonathan Zhou (MIT): face unlock for the Mac. The idea, the look of the bubble and the photo check come from there. The code here is new. - [YuNet](https://github.com/opencv/opencv_zoo/tree/main/models/face_detection_yunet) (MIT) and [SFace](https://github.com/opencv/opencv_zoo/tree/main/models/face_recognition_sface) (Apache-2.0) from the OpenCV model zoo. ## License GPL-3.0-or-later.