BetaPublic beta · v1.2.0
The simplest way to unlock your Mac
Open the lid, look at the screen, and you are in. MacFace recognizes you on-device and signs you in.
Free · 8 MB · macOS 15 or later · No account needed
Looking for you…
Face ID for Mac
Built on Apple technologies
- Vision
- Core ML
- Neural Engine
- LocalAuthentication
- CryptoKit
A face unlock like no other
Most webcam unlock tools feel slow because they start the camera only after the lock screen appears. MacFace starts earlier and stays ready.
Ready before the lock screen is
The camera starts warming the instant the lid opens, in parallel with macOS bringing up the lock screen. By the time you can see the login window, MacFace is already looking.
- ≈1 s
- from lid open to desktop
- 8 ms
- between frames while scanning
- 12 s
- camera kept warm for retries
- Pre-warms on wake
- The camera starts the moment the lid opens, not after the lock screen appears.
- Instant retries
- A failed scan keeps the camera running, so hovering the notch tries again with no cold start.
- Notch-native
- A closed pill while armed, a Dynamic Island-style scan while looking, clear success and failure states.
“I open the lid and I'm already on my desktop. I forgot I even had a password.”
Works from your chair
Lean back. MacFace recognizes you at a normal sitting distance, not just when you are leaning into the camera.
Sharper input, farther reach
Faces are found on a 960 px frame, and the recognizer reads a crop from the native sensor pixels instead of an upscaled thumbnail. A face 1.5 m away is still about 63 px wide, well within range.
- 960 px detection
- Half again the resolution most tools use for finding a face.
- Full-resolution recognition
- The 112×112 recognizer input is warped from the real sensor crop.
- Picks the right person
- Someone behind you is ignored, and the scan stays locked on the same face from frame to frame.
Set up in ten seconds
Enrollment runs inside the notch. Turn your head through nine quick poses and MacFace keeps only the sharpest frames.
Best-of-N capture
For every pose MacFace gathers a short burst of frames and saves only the two sharpest, judged by Apple's own capture-quality score. Blurry mid-turn frames never make it into your template.
Tilt your head slightly left
5 of 9 poses · 10 of 18 samples
- Password once
- Enter your Mac password a single time. It is encrypted and never shown again.
- Multiple identities
- Enroll several people, or yourself with and without glasses, and switch any off without deleting.
- Recapture any time
- New haircut, new lighting, new office. Redo a face from Settings in ten seconds.
“Enrollment took less time than reading the permissions screen.”
Your face stays on your Mac
MacFace never opens a network connection. There is no account, no telemetry, and no server that could ever hold your data.
Encrypted end to end, on one device
Camera frames are processed in memory and discarded. What remains is a handful of numbers per face and one encrypted password, both locked behind Touch ID.
- Camera frames
- Processed in memory and discarded. Nothing is ever written to disk.
- Face data
- Stored as 512-number embeddings, encrypted with AES-GCM.
- Password
- Encrypted at rest. The key lives in the login Keychain and is loaded only after Touch ID or your login password.
- Session
- Re-locks itself after an idle period you choose, so an unattended Mac does not stay authorized forever.
- Liveness checks
- Screen glare and device-bezel detection reject a phone held up to the camera. Choose Light or Heavy.
- Only when locked
- The password is typed only when macOS itself reports the screen as locked. Never anywhere else.
- Delete in a click
- Remove your faces or the stored password from Settings. The encrypted files are gone immediately.
Runs on the Neural Engine
Detection, alignment, recognition and liveness all run on-device with Apple's frameworks, so it is fast on battery and works offline.
Apple silicon, end to end
Vision finds the face and its landmarks, a Core ML ArcFace model turns it into a 512-number embedding, and the match is a cosine similarity against your enrolled templates. Every step runs on the Neural Engine.
- Core ML recognizer
- ArcFace embeddings compared by cosine similarity, with a threshold you can tune.
- Tunable strictness
- Distance and match-strictness presets in Settings, plus a hidden Face Lab that shows live scores.
- Trackpad haptics
- A soft tap when you hover the notch and when the unlock lands.
Unlock your Mac with a look
Install in a minute. Delete everything in a click.
Free · 8 MB · macOS 15 or later
“The notch animation alone is worth it. It feels like it shipped with the Mac.”
Questions & answers
Does MacFace work on Macs without a notch?
Yes. On Macs without a notch the interface appears as a floating pill at the top of the screen, in the same Dynamic Island style.
Which Macs and macOS versions are supported?
Any Mac running macOS 15 Sequoia or later, on Apple silicon or Intel. Recognition uses the Neural Engine where available.
How does it unlock without an Apple login API?
macOS has no login API for third-party apps, so MacFace types your stored password for you once it recognizes you. The password is encrypted on your Mac and only decrypted in memory at unlock time.
Is it as secure as Touch ID?
No. A MacBook webcam is a flat 2D sensor with no depth map. MacFace rejects a printed photo and usually a photo on a phone, but it cannot reliably reject a replayed video. Treat it as a convenience feature.
Can I remove my data?
At any time. Settings has a delete button for your enrolled faces and one for the stored password. The encrypted files are removed immediately.