Touch ID being Erratic

My wife and I also each got an iPhone 5S a few weeks ago and had the same experience as others with erratic Touch ID sensor activation after about two weeks. There are lot of posts on this explaining how they tried different solutions to no avail. Some of these were radical: reset the iPhone, reload iOS, swap for a new phone, etc.

I read Apple's Knowlege based artiicle http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5883. A lot of folks on this thread are concentrating on the method of registering their prints, but the small paragraph "Cleaning the Touch ID sensor" worked for me. If you hold the iPhone up to the light at the right angle you will probably see a grasing-looking smudge all over and around the sensor. This would be a no-no for the extremely high resolution scanning process. I just wiped the area with a soft dry cotton towel and the smudges came off easily. The phone now responds to every touch again. I would like to hear if this has worked for anyone else.

i2 wrote:

My wife and I also each got an iPhone 5S a few weeks ago and had the same experience as others with erratic Touch ID sensor activation after about two weeks. There are lot of posts on this explaining how they tried different solutions to no avail. Some of these were radical: reset the iPhone, reload iOS, swap for a new phone, etc.

I read Apple's Knowlege based artiicle http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5883. A lot of folks on this thread are concentrating on the method of registering their prints, but the small paragraph "Cleaning the Touch ID sensor" worked for me. If you hold the iPhone up to the light at the right angle you will probably see a grasing-looking smudge all over and around the sensor. This would be a no-no for the extremely high resolution scanning process. I just wiped the area with a soft dry cotton towel and the smudges came off easily. The phone now responds to every touch again. I would like to hear if this has worked for anyone else.

I wonder if you might be onto something with that thought.

Great discussion now! Cleaning th Touch ID sesor immediately restored both my and my wife's Touch ID button.

After reading some of the posts, there probably are a number of causes and so a number of different solutions. So not a one-size-fits-all solutionl. A lot of emphasis seems to be on re-scanning. I don't see much said in these posts that the Apple recommendation for proper ID sensor cleanliness is understood or is being followed. Remember Apple says to keep the sensor clean so why not? This is neither a secret nor to be unexpected.

Here are quotes from the Apple Knowledge base article http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5883:

"Cleaning the Touch ID sensor

A clean Touch ID sensor can read your fingerprint more easily. As needed, use a clean, lint-free cloth to wipe off any dirt or debris from the Home button."

Troubleshooting Touch ID

Ensure that your fingers and the Home button are clean and dry.*

* Moisture, lotions, sweat, oils, cuts, or dry skin may affect fingerprint recognition. Certain activities can also temporarily affect fingerprint recognition, including exercising, showering, swimming, cooking, or other conditions or changes that affect your fingerprint."

Here's my hypothrsis that might explain how a dirty sensor could affect reliability. Joe_Fo in the above post wrote that he re-scanned without cleaning and it only worked for a while before going back to unreliable operation. If you look at his great picture of the greasy mess, you see what the sensor is dealing with. The ID sensor is touch capacitive and is measuring extremely small differences in conductivity as it measures the small varitions in the fingerprint grooves. So it is able to create the proper scan with that greasy mess pattern. Now over time you gradually change the greasy pattern with a resulting change in conductivity. So if you rescan you get different conductivity and theregore the scan once again works for a while.

So with great technolgy comes great resposibility. This means clean the sensor, wash your hands and dry them before scanning your print. And clean the sensor periodically. And consider all the caviots that Apple has said will affect Touch ID. If all this has been been followed and you still have problems, then look for other causes.

i2 wrote:

Here are quotes from the Apple Knowledge base article http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5883:

This is really weard .. when I click on that link, I get a blank page.

Troubleshooting Touch ID

Ensure that your fingers and the Home button are clean and dry.*

* Moisture, lotions, sweat, oils, cuts, or dry skin may affect fingerprint recognition. Certain activities can also temporarily affect fingerprint recognition, including exercising, showering, swimming, cooking, or other conditions or changes that affect your fingerprint."

I never saw mention of showering and dry(ness) before. In fact, I asked the Genius I talked to why it stopped working after I washed and he said washed hands are best. I wonder if they've been changing this page to address some of our complaints.

WDH1000 wrote:

I have tried everything suggested in posts, and the touch ID only recognizes my prints for ~1-2 days, then I need to delete all and rescan. It's strange how it works very reliably for about a day, then not at all. Are my fingerprints changing that often? I don't get it...

The claim from Apple is that either you did a poor job of training initially or you had one of the asterisk items at the bottom of http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5883?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US (*Moisture, lotions, sweat, oils, cuts, or dry skin may affect fingerprint recognition. Certain activities can also temporarily affect fingerprint recognition, including exercising, showering, swimming, cooking, or other conditions or changes that affect your fingerprint) change your print. I talked to Apple Care yesterday and they advised to delete and re-create the print if your finger has changed permanently, or stop doing the offending activity and wait for your print to return to normal for the temporary changes.

My own idea is to try to create an additional print of after a shower to see if I can get it to work under all conditions. But, so far this hasn't worked.

George Guerrero wrote:

FWIW, I am of the opinion that it is a software issue, at least the one that impacts me specifically.

I get ~90% success rate. When it fails, it does so NOT with a "try again" but as if it doesn't sense the registered finger and eventually moves to "slide to unlock". HOWEVER, if I put a non-registered finger, it correctly provides the "try again" message. So clearly the hardware is sensing something.

It rejects incorrect prints from a non-registered finger, but struggles to fully accept a registered finger 10% of the time. It's as if there is a third option – accept, reject AND "not really sure".

When in the "not really sure" state, it never eventually accepts, but 100% of the time I can get it to work normally when invoking control center and opening and closing calculator.

Incidentally, and I didn't have the phone long enough to say for sure, I started to have issus after the update that added the slight pause before the "slide to unlock" message appeared. Originally, it appeared immediately. Certainly not diagnosing anything by saying so... just curious if anyone noticed the same thing.

Hi George,

Couple of points:

There are several issues, the most easily fixed is "proper" registration and uage. While it does not affect everyone, indicated by reports some have no problems with TID, for those of us that do, it can be overcome provided the H/W isn't defective. This, IMHO, is unrelated to the S/W problems.

The issue you point out is S/W related, and good catch on the "try again" with a non-registered finger. I never tried that until just now, and I see the same thing. The trick I posted earlier in this thread with the Control Panel however does work however. It appears to "fix" a brain dead TID. I'm seeing it on 7.0.4 too.

I never saw it prior to 7.0.3 which introduced the delayed prompt, but then again, I never had any unlock problems from the launch once I changed how I registered a finger. I started having issues when running about 35 apps in the background trying to break the phone to see what others were seeing. I now get the springboard crashes and the brain dead TID issues with Twitter the last active app and a locked screen. That will teach me 🙂

There is another thread on ths issue, and there's a registered developer there who reported it to Apple. Hopefully to be fixed soon...

Joe_Fo wrote:

I never saw it prior to 7.0.3 which introduced the delayed prompt, but then again, I never had any unlock problems from the launch once I changed how I registered a finger. I started having issues when running about 35 apps in the background trying to break the phone to see what others were seeing. I now get the springboard crashes and the brain dead TID issues with Twitter the last active app and a locked screen. That will teach me 🙂

There is another thread on ths issue, and there's a registered developer there who reported it to Apple. Hopefully to be fixed soon...

Hi Joe,

Thanks for your reply. Had not read about the Twitter-specific cause/effect until your note. I just gave it a try and sure enough... brain dead TID. For the benefit of others, just to be clear, I had Twitter open and allowed the iPhone to self-lock after the user-selected 1 minute interval. Simply sleeping the phone using the top button and Twitter as last app does not result in TID purgatory.

Will report back if any other specific use case results in a TID failure. FWIW, I do appreciate your efforts to help debug despite not seeing the issue initially. I'm sure I am not alone in that sentiment. 🙂

Joe_Fo wrote:

Have you ever been struck by lightning?

Lol .. in searching for a solution I notice some interesting stuff .. the touch id video shows how I want to use it , at http://www.apple.com/iphone-5s/videos/ It's worth it to see how the rest of society uses it. Also, at Forbes, one writer with some interesting hopes for a software fix at http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2013/10/15/iphone-5s-touch-id-fingerpr int-scanner-is-a-fail-for-20-of-users-heres-what-to-do/ and http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2013/10/13/iphone-5s-touch-id-likely-o n-ipad-5-even-though-performance-is-erratic/

I was having problems with repeated springboard crashes last night and found this thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5471829?start=15&tstart=0

Seems the "reduce motion" setting is having some impact as well. I turned it back to "off" and indeed the crashing stopped. But then Touch ID failed after a while too. Just turned "reduce motion" back on and it fixed Touch ID.

We need the 7.1 update in a big way!

Since the iOS 7.1 beta does not address this, I suggest we all ask Apple for an enhancement at http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html . Maybe if everyone here does the same thing, we can get a faster response. Feel free to copy and paste. I just submitted this:

Subject: Touch ID Fails after a short time

Touch ID works great initially, but fails completely for me after a few hours.

It seems to me that it fails because my prints change a little bit, and thinking they’re normal, the software adds them to the existing print. Over time, this actually degrades the existing print, until it no longer works. I suggest that you change the software as follows:

1 change the enrollment procedure to allow as many scans as I want to do

2 allow me to go back and add to an enrollment at any time

3 provide a “disable” switch in the touch id settings to disable the automatic modification of a stored print by the software

I would be willing to test these ideas, if you want.

paulfromhere wrote:

Since the iOS 7.1 beta does not address this, I suggest we all ask Apple for an enhancement at http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html . Maybe if everyone here does the same thing, we can get a faster response. Feel free to copy and paste. I just submitted this:

Subject: Touch ID Fails after a short time

Touch ID works great initially, but fails completely for me after a few hours.

It seems to me that it fails because my prints change a little bit, and thinking they’re normal, the software adds them to the existing print. Over time, this actually degrades the existing print, until it no longer works. I suggest that you change the software as follows:

1 change the enrollment procedure to allow as many scans as I want to do

2 allow me to go back and add to an enrollment at any time

3 provide a “disable” switch in the touch id settings to disable the automatic modification of a stored print by the software

I would be willing to test these ideas, if you want.

Feedback submitted, I stated that TID fails after scanning, usually within a day and pointed them to this discussion.

Here's another thank you to Joe_Fo and his instructions for making TID more reliable:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5446246?tstart=30

I always use my right thumb and like many here, TID works reliably for just a day or two but then stops recognizing my thumb. I suffered this way for months. But Joe_Fo's instructions to scan more of the pad of my thumb instead of the tip has worked well over the past few days.

I think many of us are used to pressing the iPhone button with the tip of our finger. But for fingerprint scanning it seems that using a different placement, more like for a scan, improves results. I don't have a cover, cleaning the sensor or my thumb doesn't make a difference, etc. I'm thankful for not having to scan my thumb every other day!

lgcebuk wrote:

Just been talking to Apple Europe (Ireland) who, in spite of the gathering evidence if a problem, seem unable to treat customers properly. Apple said they had not "announced" a problem (as they did with Maps) and therefore could not accept the problem existed! Long, drawn out conversation ended with Apple employee who expected me to swap my 8 week old iPhone for an unboxed, unknown, unsealed replacement.

I had the same problem as everyone else - decreasing function of Touch ID. At Apple Tech support request wiped my phone and set it back up again - worked fine for 2 days then Touch ID started failing again. I sent video evidence of what's happening but Apple seem to be in denial. This in spite of authoratative reports of the problem on nasdaq.com, forbes.com, Wall St Journal - with journalists experiencing failure too.

Apple Europe seemed happy for me to take retailer to court rather than accept there is a fault at the time of purchase. I am a committed Apple user but I am worried this is a sign that quality and function are now less reliable. If Customer Service don't care at a senior level what else can we do?

I followed the usual advice to return it, and am on my 5th device. All behave the same.

In spite of getting no information that it's a known problem from Apple Support, I am encouraged by nyfred's comment ( https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5400101?answerId=23854843022#23854843022 ) that people in Cook's office said "they said they are aware and looking into the touch ID problem." Also, a few pages back, a Thailand poster said that the Genius there advised him to keep his phone until a softare fix is issued ... more evidence to wait.

robert d.fromchicago wrote:

All we will need to do is run the program with the iPhone connected to the computer, and replicate the issue. This will generate a log report that we’ll save and send back to our engineers. We will need to note the exact time that the issue occurred as we’re replicating it, so when they review the logs, they can find any relevant information that could tell us what is needed to hopefully get this resolved once and for all.

Great, but if they still don't find a problem, make sure they understand that the stored print is somehow getting damaged by the software, instead of getting enhanced over time, as it's supposed to. I'll bet they won't be able to actually check the status of the stored print with the test you're running. If they gave us a "disable" switch on the print enhancement part of the program, and also let us add more touches during enrollment, I'm sure that would solve the problem. This is not the kind of thing that will show up on a log. See my earlier post a page back https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5400101?start=540&tstart=0

For anyone that has the issue of Touch ID acting like it's completely deactivated, requiring a password, and then working immediately again after putting in your password check out this thread.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5540495?answerId=23848872022#23848872022

I started noticing that this issue happened to me only when I left Twitter as an open app in the foreground and put the phone into sleep mode. Looks like I'm not alone so this may be the same for others on this thread.