Touch ID Problem

Hi there EDLIU,

You may find the "Get help with Touch ID" section toward the bottom of the article below helpful for resolving issues with Touch ID.

Use Touch ID on iPhone and iPad

-Griff W.

Thank you for using the Apple Support Community. Due to the nature of your issue or question you may find more information by using another one of Apple's support resources - https://getsupport.apple.com/GetproductgroupList.action.

-Griff W.

If you have an iPhone 6 Plus purchased in December and your Touch ID does not work, let me save you some time. No matter what you do, it's not going to work until Apple issues an iOS update.

I'm not talking about spotty recognition. I'm talking about NO recognition. You enter a finger. It works fine on the first try for a couple of hours. Then, as more time goes by, the recognition gradually gets worse, until less than 24 hours later there is no recognition whatsoever. At that point you can enter the same finger again and it will be recognized immediately.

At first I thought it was hardware, so I returned the phone and got one that did the same thing. Then I researched some more and the other people experiencing it seemed to also all be on 8.1.2, so I went back to Apple this past Sunday to ask for a phone with something prior to 8.1.2.

The technician told me that Apple has "acknowledged" the Touch ID problem and that it will be fixed in the next release which is coming out "soon". I did get a phone with 8.0 on it, but Touch ID still does not work, even though I set up as new with no restore.

I am guessing that there is some kind of second factor like model, amount of idle time, or manufacture date because it does not seem to be affecting everyone. Or maybe it IS and they are all convinced that they are doing it wrong.

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purchase date: 12/12/14

iPhone 6 Plus 64g

ios 8.0(12A366)

Model NGAH2LL/A (Sprint has different model than other carriers)

I stumbled on a workaround for the no touch id whatsoever problem yesterday. My touch id was completely gone again so I went to the setup screen to make sure. If you touch the sensor in setup, the finger you have set up in touch id will highlight if it is recognized. Nothing. So I was sitting there thinking, with my finger still resting on the sensor. About 30 seconds to a minute later all of a sudden the set up finger in the touch id highlighted. After that it highlighted immediately very time I touched the sensor and touch id was again working on the phone.

Unfortunately this only seems to work on the setup screen, not the lock screen, and it only revives touch id for a little while. Still it is less time-consuming than reentering a finger in setup.

She was very vague about when the update would come out and what exactly the problem is. Since this is not happening to everyone it has to be a combination of a particular hardware piece and software. Also she said that Apple had "acknowledged" the problem but apparently only to me 🙂 because I have not seen a word about it anywhere online.

For me, where the TouchID fingerprint works fine and then recognition fades over time until there is no recognition, it seems to point to whatever hardware component stores the fingerprints. But I am on my 3rd phone now so that would have to mean that the store I am getting the replacements from only has this bad batch of hardware.

Do you have a Sprint contract by any chance? For some reason iPhones for Sprint have a different model than the other carriers. That would explain why this is not happening to the majority.

I am so disappointed. You wait for weeks to get the thing, pay a boatload for it, and then spend hours trying to get TouchID to function. At one point I realized that I had spent more time, what with the wipes and installs and redoing the fingerprints, than Touch ID could ever save me in a lifetime of using it. I have it turned off now. I just hope there really is an update in the offing and that it works.

That's interesting that your mom can use it on the same hardware. Other people have said the same thing. If it's true that Touch ID really does not work for some people due to physical characteristics, then Apple is ethically bound to make that clear before purchase.

Since I'm on phone 3 I don't think that a hardware replacement is worthwhile. I am hopeful that the software can be improve, since my fingers can register and work perfectly initially. The fact that the recognition for each print decays at the same rate seems to indicate that there is some kind of software component to it.

same problem here !! Touch ID is not reading perfectly after 8.1.2

i'm do almost every thing but when my iphone is 8.1 it's amazing in reading finger print

I am very hopeful. The source I read said that it fixes Touch ID problems for a "small number of users" with "unusual usage patterns". That puts the problem outside the hardware (I'm on phone 3 so it can't be the hardware), and explains why it does not affect everyone. I really hope it works, since I tested the last variable I could think of yesterday at work. I tried setting the fingerprint while the phone was only on cellular and then checking it throughout the day. If anything the fingerprint recognition dissolved faster on cellular, so that was not it.

Let's keep our Apple-rejected fingers crossed.