IPhone X Face ID stops working

Exact same thing is happening to me here. I did find you can clear Face ID, reset, then set it up again and it will work anywhere from 1 time only up to even a couple hours, although usually it’s less than 5 minutes for me. Hope it’s software.

Could be you. My wife cannot get Touch ID to work for her. She puts in her fingerprint and everything is fine for a day then it stops working. I have had my fingerprint in her phone for three years now and it still works for me. I know an older gentleman who with his hands and Touch IID doesn’t work for him either.

Your facial features, skin texture/color, etc., may be affecting Face ID. Try letting a friend enter their face and see if it keeps working for them. If it does then it’s something about your face.

Hi lkrupp, thanks for your response. I would consider that possible under other circumstances but in this case I think I’ve narrowed down when the fault is occurring, so maybe other people can verify if the same thing is happening to them.

Anyway, what I’ve found in the last couple days is interesting. When my Face ID stops working, even if I reset it and try and scan my face again, the phone is unable to recognize a face until I’ve done a reboot of the phone and sometimes needed to do a hard reset. Usually when I do this, I’m then able to scan my face again, and it will work generally from 1 to 5 times before having to go through the same process all over again.

Except: if I’m at home and on my wireless network. In that case, Face ID works FLAWLESSLY until I leave my home/roam off my wireless network, and then it’s back to the same crap. I’m visiting my family for Thanksgiving and out of curiosity, checked for the same pattern when I’m on my dad’s wireless network, and same exact thing. It worked great until I roamed off the network. I don’t think it will start working again when I roam back on in a little bit until I do the reset process, but I’ll update later.

Anyway, was curious if other people had noticed this same pattern.

Okay, I think I’ve gotten a little more detail worked out. Actually I’m writing a lot of this down for when I ultimately wind up at an Apple store.

My Face ID works great as long as it’s on a wireless network. It does not matter which wireless network. If I put it in airplane mode, and it had been on a wireless network when I did so, it will continue to work fine. If I keep it on airplane mode until I’m somewhere with a wireless network already known to my phone, then turn airplane mode off and let it go on whichever wireless network it knows about, Face ID works fine that way too.

When the phone roams off a wireless network, so just on LTE, Face ID stops working. Even if I reset Face ID, if I’m not on a wireless network, it will only work at most for a couple of minutes—and in order to even get that far, I’ll have to most likely hard reset the phone first or else it refuses to recognize my face (or any face for that matter).

If I roam back into a wireless network, Face ID will still not work. Rebooting my phone is all I need do to make it work again, however. And if I keep the phone on airplane mode the whole time between two wireless networks, it won’t need to be rebooted, but if it’s spent any time in non-wireless/LTE world, then it will before working again. I’ve been able to replicate this multiple times now.

Hopefully this helps others, or others can corroborate at least. I think this issue is likely only affecting a small subset of phones, since other than being just bizarre, I would think we would have seen quite a few reports by now.

Take your phone to your local Apple Store or servicer for diagnosis and repair/replacement.

This is not normal and is certainly not being seen by most, and it's always possible there are a small number of phones in which the Face ID hardware may be defective in some way, resulting in this issue.

There are alot of people on this thread with the same problem. I am sick of constantly replacing phones, it is a pain setting everything up again. Apple need to acknowledge if this is a software problem that will be fixed, or if it really is a hardware fault.

I have the same problem. Face ID stops working after a couple of hours. I would restart my phone and it would work again but some time passes and it would stop working. Sometimes, it stops working after twenty minutes. No idea why. I’ve tried resetting my settings and restoring my phone. Still have the same problem.

I did. So I think I have figured out a possible issue with an application that uses the camera. Cam card for business cards. My phone was working fine until I installed that app and that app was in my original backup as well. Essentially I have been installing a few apps a day and then I use my phone to figure out what is causing the issues. Also the app told me that my camera does not support autofocus . So I think the app is incompatible and causes problems with Face ID. Check to see if you have any apps that require camera use and delete it and see if Face ID is fixed. You have to restart phone once app is deleted as well.

I have a same problem here in Hong Kong.
And your suggestion gave me a hint about LTE. So that I have changed my SIM card to another carrier and not happen this issue whole one day. I am now doubting carrier or SIM is making this error.

I ended up going back to the Genius Bar and they gave me a new iPhone and Face ID works perfectly now.

These were my attempts before getting the new one:

- resetting settings

- restoring iPhone from back up

- restoring iPhone as new

Attempts didn’t work and they just gave me a new one after going in multiple times.

I also had same problem..I did hard reset and it worked again..I love everything apple and I believe apple products are indisputably the best but it becomes frustrating when glitches like this happen especially in the iPhone X..

Note that if you did a hard reset it may be likely that the problem will recur, as the phone only shuts off Face ID when it detects the problem has recurred.

Certainly if it happens again, please visit your local Apple Store/servicer for repair/replacement of your phone.

It seems this problem with the Face ID is gradually becoming an issue,especially in our part of the world where there is no apple center(GHANA)..I have had 8 people bring their devices to my shop for same assistance with the Face ID .in some cases a simple hard reset with the side and volume keys did the magic ultimately..But not it hard reset is not working under some circumstances but I figured another way..I make sure the device is backed up and I download a fresh copy of iOS using iTunes...initially 11.1 and now 11.2.i use the iOS in restoring the device and Face ID begins to function again on the devices and non of them have ever complained about the Face ID stopping on their device again...

I have changed my iPhone X for multiple times, however the problem still occurs.

In the previous thread, someone stated that this FaceID issue only happens under LTE and does not occur under WiFi. As to this I have attempted on replacing my SIM card from my carrier. However the problem still persists. A few days ago I went on a holiday abroad while using a differen carrier SIM card and the problem stopped occurring.

My guess is that the problem only happens under certain carrier lte networks.

I have exactly the same problem and it only happens when I'm in LTE, for example in a train or a tramway... A reboot is enought for TouchID to work again