face-unlock

Face ID for Linux.

Unlock the lock screen, sudo and admin prompts with your face.
On KDE Plasma, GNOME, Hyprland and Niri.

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

Install

Arch, CachyOS, EndeavourOS, Manjaro

yay -S face-unlock

Fedora

sudo curl -fsSL -o /etc/yum.repos.d/face-unlock.repo \
  https://loonixtools.github.io/face-unlock/face-unlock.repo
sudo dnf install face-unlock

Debian, Ubuntu

codename="$(sed -n 's/^VERSION_CODENAME=//p' /etc/os-release)"
sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://loonixtools.github.io/face-unlock/KEY.gpg \
  | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/face-unlock.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/face-unlock.gpg] https://loonixtools.github.io/face-unlock/deb/$codename ./" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/face-unlock.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install face-unlock

Updates come with your system updates. It needs a camera and one of these desktops, on Wayland:

	Lock screen	sudo and admin prompts	Bubble
KDE Plasma 6	✅	✅	✅ above the lock screen too
GNOME	✅	✅	✅ above the lock screen too
Hyprland	✅ with hyprlock or swaylock	✅	✅ once the lock screen is gone
Niri	✅ with swaylock or hyprlock	✅	✅ once the lock screen is gone

On GNOME a small GNOME extension draws the bubble. Turning face unlock on switches it on; right after installing, log out and back in once.

On Hyprland and Niri, admin prompts and setting up a face need a polkit agent (for example hyprpolkitagent). Hyprland without uwsm does not start the lock screen part by itself: the menu shows what to add to its config.

Coming from plasma-face-unlock?

This is the same program with a new name. Your faces and settings move over on their own. On Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora the repository moved too: remove the old plasma-face-unlock repository file and add the new one above. On Arch, yay -S face-unlock replaces the old package.

How to use

face-unlock

Press 1 and look at the camera. Then lock the screen and look at it.

Settings

Is it safe?

A convenience, not extra security. A webcam only sees a flat picture.

Photo or video on a phone, tablet or glossy screen	✅ Stopped
Matte printed photo	⚠️ Only stopped with photo check strict
Video of you on a big matte screen	❌ Can get in
Five failed tries	⏸️ Paused for 15 minutes
Your face data	🔒 Numbers, no pictures. Root only.
sudo over SSH	🚫 Never unlocked by a face

More

How it works

face-unlockd	The root service. Owns the camera and the face data.
face-unlock-agent	Runs in your session. Watches the lock screen, draws the bubble.
pam_face_unlock.so	Lets sudo and admin prompts ask the service.
face-unlock	The menu.

Two small networks from the OpenCV model zoo run on the CPU: YuNet finds the face, SFace turns it into numbers. All details: man face-unlock.

Build from source

make models
make
make test
sudo make install

Needs CMake, a C++20 compiler, Qt 6, LayerShellQt, KI18n, OpenCV 4.5.4+ (with DNN), Linux-PAM and libsystemd.

Credits

• Glance by Jonathan Zhou: the idea and the look of the bubble.
• YuNet and SFace from the OpenCV model zoo.

GPL-3.0-or-later.