S.o, you’ve heard about a new feature that lets you unlock your iPhone while wearing a mask, and you want it. (Who can blame you ?!) The good news is you can access it with a public beta available now. The bad news is you’ll have to jump through a few hoops before you can use it. You also need an Apple Watch, and your smartwatch must be on your wrist, unlocked and password protected. Oh, and charged.
Do you have all that? Good.
The first thing to do is to download the most recent public beta updates for both your watch and your iPhone, so iOS 14.5 and watchOS 7.4. (Make sure your devices are backed up in case something strange happens in the process.) You will also be asked to provide your Apple ID password, so have that ready. Then go to beta.apple.com in Safari on your iPhone and select Get started. On this page you can select which of the public beta programs you want to download. Select the iOS tab and scroll down to where it is register your iOS device and select this option. Then scroll down and click on the blue Download profile button. You will then see a series of prompts to install the public beta profile.
Once you have completed this process, go to Settings, select General, and click Software update. This is where you should now see an option Download and install the public beta of iOS 14.5. Follow the instructions to install the update, take a sip of water and prepare to install your watch update. Keep in mind that your watch requires a charger and requires a minimum battery life of 50 percent.
On the same beta landing page in Safari, click Get started and then select it watchOS option from the top menu. From this page you should see a blue one Download profile button-Click It. Follow the prompts to download the public beta profile and go to your View app. Once your watch is connected to the charger and charged at least halfway through, in the Watch app go to General, thereafter Software updateand select to install under the watchOS 7.4 public beta description.
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Once the public beta profiles are installed on both your watch and your iPhone, you should be able to enable the feature that can unlock your phone while wearing a mask. Go to your phone Settings, scroll down to Face ID and Passcode, and you should now see an option to Unlock with Apple Watch. Turn this off function on. Your Apple Watch would now buzz as it unlocks your phone when you are wearing a mask, and the watch will display an option to lock your phone again. Unlocking is almost instantaneous and certainly much easier than entering your passcode.
And that’s it, you’re done! It may take a while to set it up, but hopefully you won’t have to tug on your mask or manually enter your passcode every time you must unlock your phone.