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 KDE Plasma 6, GNOME, Hyprland or Niri, on Wayland.

KDE Plasma: nothing more to do.
GNOME: log out and back in once after installing.
Hyprland and Niri: the bubble shows on face-unlock's own lock screen. You also need a polkit agent. If none runs, the menu offers to install one.

Hyprland and Niri: which lock screen?

When you turn face unlock on, a window asks which lock screen you want. You can change it later under Settings.

face-unlock's own: the bubble, the time and your wallpaper. You lock with face-unlock lock, and the menu shows where to put that.
Yours (hyprlock, swaylock, gtklock or waylock): press Enter on the empty password field to scan. hyprlock and swaylock also scan when you come back. There is no bubble, but hyprlock shows a line of text at the top.

Hyprland without uwsm needs a line in its config. The menu shows it.

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

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.

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