Back in January, the Facebook owned instant messaging app, WhatsApp teased adding a fingerprint authentication feature to improve privacy and security on the platform. In August the fingerprint authentication feature was rolled out for WhatsApp beta user and turned out to be a pretty sweet idea after all.
WhatsApp has now started rolling out the fingerprint authentication feature to all Android users. iOS users can already use the feature before now, but now, every Android users get to use the feature and protect their chats against unauthorized access.
Remember WhatsApp also uses 2FA (2-factor authentication) to verify the users ownership when just installing WhatsApp on a new device and occasionally when using the WhatsApp app. The new Fingerprint lock feature will now boost the security of the app even more.
Once the FingerPrint Authentication is activated, contents on the Whatsapp widget will be hidden by default. I’m not pretty sure have come across people who actually use the WhatsApp widget feature, do you?
Although the fingerprint lock hides contents on the widget, it doesn’t hide notifications from the notification panel and users can reply to notifications directly from the panel too. I want to believe the company will add a feature to hide that as well in future to protect sensitive information. It would be more useful as an option.
While the lock is on, users can still answer WhatsApp calls, I’d also like to suggest the company introduce fingerprint to answer WhatsApp calls.
Additionally, we’d also like to see a dark mode feature on WhatsApp has Facebook has planned the feature to roll out on Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp should not be left out too.
How to turn on WhatsApp Fingerprint lock on Android
- Open WhatsApp and go to Settings
- Navigate to the privacy section, Account > Privacy.
- You will find a new option called Fingerprint lock under ‘Privacy’.
- Turn on Unlock with fingerprint option to enable the feature.
- Confirm the selection by touching the fingerprint sensor.
- There are three options available for users to authenticate their identity; visible under ‘Automatically lock and includes options like ‘Immediately’, ‘After 1 minute’ and ‘After 30 minutes’.
If you can’t find the feature in your WhatsApp privacy section, go to Google Playstore and update your update your app to the latest version and the feature will be live for you.
