iOS 18 will mean the arrival on our iPhone of a good handful of functions that we have been asking for for a long time, and one of them could be lock apps using Face IDto protect them so that no one can access them even if the iPhone is unlocked.
The use of biometrics to unlock our devices emerged many years ago. It was with the iPhone 5S that Apple introduced Touch ID, unlocking using our fingerprint. Several years later, Face ID arrived, the same idea but now creating a scanner of our face, which debuted for the first time with the iPhone X, the model that celebrated 10 years of the Apple smartphone. Well, from the first day these unlocking methods appeared, people started thinking about the possibility of blocking specific applications with this system, so that even if your terminal is unlocked, no one can access that application without unlocking it again. This is something very useful when, for example, someone other than you has your phone, but you don’t want them to access your photos, emails or other content.
There are currently apps that allow you to configure this security, but it depends on the app developers. Spark, 1Password or banking applications are protected by Face ID (or Touch ID if your model is older or if you use an iPad). However, when we talk about native applications, none are protected with this system, only Notes and Photos have this option but not to access the application but to access certain content of the application. With iOS 18 it looks like this will change and we will be able to use biometric identification to access native Apple apps. What we don’t know yet is whether this will be a feature we can extend to all apps, including third-party ones, or whether it will continue to depend on developers wanting to implement it in theirs.
