Face ID not working in the App Store.

I just got the iPhone XS Max setup and I have noticed an issue when purchasing apps in the store. When I hit download the screen pops up for me to type in my password and it doesn’t let me use my Face ID. After typing in my padd word a message pops up saying “Unable to Set Up - There was a problem setting up biometric authenication on this device. Try again later.”


Can someone please help me with this, I have already tried turning off and on the iTunes and App store in the face time settings. The same message shows up when I turn it back on.

iPhone 5, iOS 6.1.3

Posted on Oct 16, 2018 4:56 PM

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8 replies

Oct 16, 2018 8:16 PM in response to OMalley949

Hmm, is your iTunes up to date? If not, that would likely explain this.


If iTunes is up to date, is this a PC or Mac? If a PC, remove iTunes as well as "Apple Mobile Device Support", which is a separate program and gets reinstalled with iTunes (just removing iTunes won't remove AMDS, you need to do that separately and it often resolves issues like this). Then download a fresh installer of iTunes and that will put AMDS back in place. You won't lose any music, playlists, or history by doing this -- all that remains in separate files that are not touched by this process.

Oct 16, 2018 6:06 PM in response to OMalley949

One last ditch effort might be to connect it to iTunes and Restore the device, which completely erases it and reinstalls iOS from scratch. Do a backup first, and you can try loading the backup after restoring to get all your settings back.


But if the problem is embedded in your backup, that can perpetuate the problem -- so the final, final thing to try is to Restore and not load a backup at all. It is a lot of work to get all your settings and accounts back like you had them, but it may come to that. You can always go back to your backup if "restoring as new" (i.e. no backup) does not help.

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Face ID not working in the App Store.

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