With all the great new features in iOS 10, Apple has also introduced some fundamental changes that long term iPhone or iPad users might not like. One of these is a change to how the home button works along with TouchID. Now, users have to press the home button, even when the screen is on, instead of resting their finger on TouchID, to unlock it. This is different to how it works in iOS 9, where you could simply rest your finger on the TouchID sensor and the screen would unlock so fast that users would miss the opportunity to even read their notifications.
The reason behind this change is due to the way widgets work on the lock screen in iOS 10. If you are an Android user, you might remember that Google experimented with widgets on the lock screen but it never got popular. iOS 10 has a similar change where users can interact with widgets right from the lock screen, without having to completely unlock the phone. Because most widgets might show private and sensitive information, TouchID only authenticates the user instead of unlocking the home screen.
This change also lets users see their notifications and just go back to what they were doing, rather than missing them because of extremely fast TouchID 2 sensors. This change also works well with devices that support Raise to Wake, i.e. iPhone 6s and above, since they don’t even have to press any button to see their notifications.
However, for users who do not want to spend too much time on their lock screen and want instant access to the home screen and apps, there is an option in iOS 10 which unlocks the device when you rest your finger on the TouchID capable home button.
- Open Settings
- Go to General > Accessibility
- Scroll down to find an option called Home and tap it
- Enable the toggle called Rest finger to unlock
Even though you can revert back to iOS 9 style lock screen behavior, make sure to give the new lock screen unlock mechanism a try, especially if your iPhone model supports wake to unlock. You might like the new lock screen change better.
