Touch ID broken after upgrade to Sequoia 15.3 / MacBook Air 13 M3

MacPro M1 - upgraded yesterday to Sequoia 15.3.2 - thought I had the same problem.

After much experimenting turns out Touch ID is very sensitive to electrical noise. I'd plugged my USB C power cable into a power supply that was not the one supplied with the Mac. Its for charging a powerbank.

I'd noticed my mouse jittering. Suspected electrical interference. Inspected the power and realised it wasn't plugged into the Apple one.

Switched to Apple supply and Touch ID sprang back into life.

This after I'd deleted and attempted to redo Touch ID fingerprints. Adding new ones, they would most remain blank with occasional lines appearing.

Clean power resolved a couple of hours of frustration.

Cautionary tale though. I've not seen this mentioned in the dozens of articles I've trawled through today, looking for clues.

I have 3-inch, M2, 2022, Touch ID became very sluggish after upgrading to 15.4.1. At first it appeared that Touch ID has simply broken down. My researches lead me to reseting it all but nothing worked.

Thanks to this reply I realised that it actually works flawlessly on the battery.

I tested my power supply, and bingo, that wasn't an original Apple Power supply. If I disconnect and stay on the battery power, Touch ID works fine.

Thanks for pin pointing the issue! However it is hard to understand why this problem appeared only after the upgrade to IOS 15.

In my case on a M3 Mac (after updating to Sequoia 15.3.1), it came down to navigating to Settings>Touch ID & Passcode, and then deleting the old fingerprint and doing a Re-enroll. Perfect!

I had the same issue with a Mac Studio M3 and a Magic Keyboard (lightening port). All settings were disabled in Touch ID security menu. I could delete the fingerprint, but then all Touch ID settings disappeared. I ended up restarting my keyboard (still no touch ID settings). Then rebooted my Mac Studio. After loging in and with keyboard connected wirelessly, I could add a fingerprint again and everything went back to normal.

I had the same problem - TouchID wouldn't work for Login after upgrade and I fixed it.

You need to delete your FingerPrints THEN...

Rebook and login as usual (password) THEN...

Add Fingerprints again

Worked for me

What worked for me was connecting the wireless keyboard via a USB-C cable. That fixed the problem instantly, after wasting a couple of hours looking for a solution for the dumbest bug I've yet encountered. Good luck to all. I'm amazed that Apple hasn't published an official fix for the problem, or come up with an update that eliminates it.

The problem began again with the update to Sequoia 15.3.2 and none of the above tips (reconnnecting Bluetooth, connecting via USB, etd.) work at all. It seems as though it is necessary to go to Settings>Touch ID & Passcode, delete the old fingerprint, and then do a "Re-Enroll" again. This works for a day, maybe. Another Apple bug...

Toggling the Touch ID in Security Menu, nor a reboot didn't fix the issue in my case. But connecting via USB Cable did the trick.

Useful general info to know!

doctorcdf27 wrote:

Hi -

Since I upgraded my MacBook Air M3 to Sequoia 15.3, the Touch ID doesn't work - I tried deleting the old fingerprint and restarting the machine; nothing seems to address the issue.

Please advise.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Christian DeFeo

if you are using an external wireless keyboard, plug it in to your MacBook Air with the charging cable and try again

If Touch ID isn't working on Mac - Apple Support

Followup: Well, a reboot seems to have fixed it for me. Hope the same can work for you as well.

I had the same problem but simply turned the keyboard off and restarted it. Back working fine

Same for me. I'm on an Mac Mini (M2 Pro) with a Touch ID reader on my keyboard. After upgrading to 15.3 it stopped working. If I go into the System Settings, then Touch ID, all of the Touch ID settings (boolean switches) are set to false and disabled (so I can't reactivate them).

I know this OS update had a lot of security updates in it, so I wonder if we need to reset anything (besides the finger print since I know you said you tried that).

Anyone have any advice?

Same issue on Macbook Pro when moving up to 15.3.1. 15.3 worked fine, now on 15.3.1 had to jump through loads of hoops to get the machine to stop shutting down by itself. Still not 100% it will restart every time.

I am on a one-month-old iMac. I've encountered the same issue. I've tried all the suggestions below. When I try to enable Touch ID I get a message instructing me to fast double-click my power button. This action does nothing. I hope Apple gets this fixed soon. (FWIW, my 2022 iMac updated and does NOT have the same issue).

One extra step for the wireless keyboard: Touch ID was not working wirelessly. It worked when I plugged the keyboard into my Mac, but when I unplugged it, Touch ID did not function. I restarted the keyboard, and then it worked fine.