Unlock your Mac with your face.

A Mac app that unlocks your Mac with your face. When you come back to your locked Mac, the notch opens and the camera looks for you for a few seconds; when it sees it’s you, the camera goes off and it types your Mac password into the lock screen for you.

Yes, it’s available now: $19.99, once. Buy it here and download it straight away; your license key comes on screen and by email. Already bought it? Download ZincWolf Unlock from this page any time.

$19.99, once, the same as every ZincWolf app. Every 1.x update is free, there’s no subscription and no account, and a license is for one Mac. It’s sold directly from zincwolf.app, with a full refund within 14 days if it isn’t for you.

No, and we’d rather say so plainly. A Mac’s camera sees in two dimensions, so ZincWolf Unlock can’t be as sure as a password or Touch ID. It turns away printed photos and photos on phones and screens, but a good video of you, a 3-D mask or someone who looks a lot like you might get in. Use it where that’s fine for you, and your password or Touch ID where it isn’t.

No. Each look checks that it’s seeing a real face, not a picture: a real-face model trained to tell faces from printed photos and screens, how the face moves (a photo moves as one flat sheet), and the signs of a screen, like its pixel pattern, its glare or a phone’s frame. So a printed photo, or a photo on a phone or tablet, is turned away, and all you do is look. Strict, in Settings › Recognition, also asks for a small turn of the head. A 2-D camera still can’t promise to stop a good video of you or a 3-D mask, which is why it’s a convenience, not a lock.

Only on your Mac. Unlock keeps numbers worked out from your face, never a picture of it, encrypted, in a folder only your user account can open. Nothing about your face is sent to us or anyone else, and nothing is used for analytics.

macOS gives apps no way to unlock a Mac except typing the password into the lock screen, so that’s what Unlock does. It checks your password with macOS when you set it up, keeps it encrypted on your Mac with its key in your keychain, and reads it only for the moment it types it. Before every few keys it checks your Mac is still locked, so it never types anywhere else.

Once after each restart, so it can read its key (or your login password, on a Mac without Touch ID). After that it works until the next restart, or until it has gone unused for as long as you choose in Settings › Security.

Only while it looks: a few seconds when you come back to your locked Mac (5 to start with, up to 10 in Settings › Recognition), with the camera’s green light on, and never right after you lock. It goes off the moment it recognises you, when you unlock another way, or when your Mac goes to sleep. Nothing it sees is recorded or saved.

Not for the first login. After a restart, FileVault’s startup screen and the login window need your password typed by hand, as macOS asks. From then on, Unlock works at the lock screen whenever you come back to your Mac.

Update it in Settings › Security. If you forget, Unlock notices when the lock screen turns the old one down, stops typing it after two tries, and asks for the new one the next time you unlock.

No. On a MacBook with a notch, the notch opens into a small island while it looks. On any other Mac, or a display without a notch, a small pill appears at the top of the screen instead.

Yes. Add a look with glasses or without in Settings › Faces, and rename, switch off or delete each one. Add only your own face: anyone whose face is added can unlock your Mac.

Yes. In Settings › Camera you can choose one camera for your Mac’s own display and another for an external display, or leave it on Automatic.

Settings › Security › Delete all data removes your faces, your password and its key at once. Quitting or deleting the app doesn’t remove them, so do this first if you’re done with it.

The camera, to see your face while it looks, and Accessibility, which macOS needs before an app can type into the lock screen. The welcome takes you to each switch in System Settings.

No. Your faces and your password never leave your Mac. It only goes online to check your license and look for updates.

Any Mac with macOS 14 Sonoma or later and a camera, its own or one you connect. On macOS 26 Tahoe its panels are made of Liquid Glass; on Sonoma and Sequoia they’re frosted.

Typing at the lock screen needs access to macOS that the Mac App Store doesn’t allow, so ZincWolf sells it directly, as it does all its apps.