fast user switching not working with Touch ID

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fast user switching not working with Touch ID

I'm asking and answering my own question here, because this issue has stymied me for about a year. Finally got it worked out with support yesterday, after an unsuccessful apple store visit a few months back on this issue.

I have two user accounts set up on my MacBook Pro. Both accounts are for me, one for work, and one for personal. Both have my fingerprint enrolled. I was never able to get Touch ID to work reliably for doing fast user switching between the accounts when they were both logged in; sometimes it would work and sometimes not. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that it only worked in one direction (work > personal) rather than that it just didn't work sometimes, or on the second try.

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.14

Posted on Jun 28, 2019 8:23 AM

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Sam Gechter Author

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Jun 28, 2019 8:28 AM in response to Sam Gechter

The result of the call was that hitting the touch id button looks up the finger print, and if the account you are in is the first account created on the machine, and the finger you are using is enrolled for this user, it will not switch accounts, as it thinks you are already in the right place. So if you use two accounts for yourself, you have to enroll a different finger for each account. You also cannot have overlapping fingers enrolled across the accounts - if you later add the finger used on the first account to the second account, that finger used on the first account cannot be used to take you to the second account in fast user switching.

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fast user switching not working with Touch ID

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