Touch ID being Erratic

I too am having this problem. No scan works longer than about an hour. I watched the YouTube video posted by Joe Fomenko and followed his approach numerous times. It makes no difference. I've tried scanning the same finger in as two different ones, and that doesn't help either. Any new scan will work very well for about an hour and then deteriorates rapidly, becoming completely unusable within a couple of hours.

My touch Id works very bad. I can't scan my finger at all! I told my friend to bind his fingerprint, but touch Id did not scanned it too. I don't know what to do, because I live in Russia, and my iphone is from USA, I don't know where I can fix this problem

For me TouchID work for 2 days. After that i need to set again. So now I am using 5s as 5

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.

i had to return my 5S for 3 times for various reasons. I finally got this one and had been happy with it for the last 2 weeks. Now comes the touch ID issue. I wished I waited for next gen 😐

I noticed that the problem occurs when you use the moisturizer to your hands.

MaMiFrom wrote:

I noticed that the problem occurs when you use the moisturizer to your hands.

That's not considered an issue, apple warns about that: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5883?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

After applying Joes method of installing finger print (thumb in my case) 3 days ago, it worked on & off.

However, as I've said earlier I removed the screen protector film & it now works nearly 1st time every time. I experienced problems with it activating outside in the cold but now ok.

I've put a new film on but cut it short to not encroach near the silver ring around the home button & it still works great.

Before using Joes method & with film on it was useless, now I quite like it. Good luck.

Yes, I am already aware of this note, but everyone is aware of?

Touch ID all in all works very inconsistantly. Seems loke more of a gimmick/toy than a tool. Ive had to rescan at least 6 times and could have done it several more times. Dry skin definetly an issue.

Frankswan wrote:

I've put a new film on but cut it short to not encroach near the silver ring around the home button & it still works great.

Before using Joes method & with film on it was useless, now I quite like it. Good luck.

The protective film is an extremely close fit to the metal ring on my 5S and is shifted very slightly so the film is almost exactly on the edge of the ring. Before I go ripping it off, I wonder what percentage of reported TID problems are from phones with film. I believe a few people have said it makes no difference but a larger sample would help.

So 2 days ago I added 2 more fingers, left and right index. I usually only have one, my right thumb. At times for testing, I add my left thumb as well.

While both index fingers worked fine, this AM the left is failing 100%, however I have not been using either index that much.

I don't know if the total number registered is key to overall stability yet or not.

For now, I'm back to just both thumbs...

Joe_Fo wrote:

So 2 days ago I added 2 more fingers, left and right index. I usually only have one, my right thumb. At times for testing, I add my left thumb as well.

While both index fingers worked fine, this AM the left is failing 100%, however I have not been using either index that much.

I don't know if the total number registered is key to overall stability yet or not.

Joe: I think you're onto something with the total number of prints affecting stability. I had both thumbs and index fingers registered. My right thumb and index finger have been registered for a couple months and work well (when I don't get the total brain-dead failure), but the left index and left thumb registered in the last week or two per your instructions failed almost 100% of the time after a day or less. Interestingly, the left thumb highlighted on the TID registration screen, but would not unlock the phone. Couldn't do anything with the left index. I deleted the left index finger and the left thumb suddenly worked to unlock. Now I have four of the five spots filled: Right thumb twice (this works great for me), right index and left thumb. Alll work pretty well, with the right thumb working the best.

Joe_Fo wrote:

So 2 days ago I added 2 more fingers, left and right index. I usually only have one, my right thumb. At times for testing, I add my left thumb as well.

While both index fingers worked fine, this AM the left is failing 100%, however I have not been using either index that much.

I don't know if the total number registered is key to overall stability yet or not.

For now, I'm back to just both thumbs...

I had total failure of my right thumb today, 3 days after re-scanning. It worked okay last night, but it took 2-4 attempts to get the phone to open, with the need for greater precision with placement on the scanner. I also scanned my left thumb and index fingers at the same time as my right thumb, but do not use those fingers ordinarily to open the phone. These still work. With this evidence I think at least part of the problem is some sort of bug in the continual learning of TID.

Agree with both you and mrsnork. When I had a 100% print for a month, and my wife now still 100% over 2 months, that was with only one thumb registered.

I did have something go way out of whack very early on, documented in another thread, reported it to Apple and was given a data capture profile to gather logs on TID, but could not duplicated the problem. I left it with the tech that there was something lurking. It reassigned a print to a totally different finger as far as names go after deleting a newly added finger. The old finger failed 100%, yet the newly added finger, deleted after adding it without leaving the "add a fingerprint" screen, still worked, only under the entry of a different finger. It was very strange, but not repeatable.

Starting to think something is hosing pointers into the database, and the multiple entrys are being corrupt over time...

Might be worth a shot for those still having failures to try deleting all fingerprints and redo just one using the method I posted in this thread.

If this produces better results, this is feedback which would help Apple pinpoint the problem, FWIW.