4 Face Unlock Apps Worth Trying on Mac

MacBooks have had Touch ID for years, but Apple still hasn't brought Face ID to the Mac. If you want to unlock your laptop just by looking at it, you'll need a third-party app.

A few independent developers have found ways to make that possible using the camera already built into your Mac. Some recognize your face at the lock screen, while others let you protect individual apps. A couple can do both.

There's an important catch, though. These apps don't give your Mac the same Face ID system found on an iPhone. They use ordinary webcams rather than Apple's dedicated depth-sensing hardware, so they're better understood as convenience tools than security upgrades.

Here are four free, open-source options worth knowing about, and how they differ.

Quick comparison

App	Best for	What it unlocks	Price	Minimum macOS
Hey Mac	Face unlock and app locking together	Lock screen + individual apps	Free	14.0
Glance	A polished, customizable face unlock experience	Lock screen	Free	15.0
FaceUnlock	Straightforward webcam-based unlocking	Lock screen	Free	See compatibility note
FaceGate	Protecting specific apps with face recognition	Individual apps	Free	14.0

Hey Mac and FaceGate target Apple silicon Macs. Glance supports Apple silicon and Intel, while FaceUnlock offers a universal build. FaceUnlock's published requirements conflict: its README lists macOS 14 or later, but its website and project settings specify macOS 26.5. Check the current release before installing.

1. Hey Mac

Hey Mac is the most versatile option here because it tackles two separate problems: unlocking your Mac and keeping other people out of specific applications.

When you wake your Mac, it uses the camera to recognize your face and unlock the screen. You also get a Face ID-inspired animation that appears around the MacBook notch, with a simpler visual option if you prefer something less noticeable.

Its second feature is particularly useful on shared computers. You can lock apps such as Messages, Mail, or Notes, and Hey Mac blurs their contents until you authenticate with your face, Touch ID, or a password.

You can decide whether an app should lock every time you open it, after a short interval, or when you switch away.

Face recognition runs locally, and the developer says encrypted face data stays on your Mac. However, the public website does not fully explain how lock-screen credentials are handled, which is worth investigating before trusting it with your login.

Hey Mac is free and open source, requires macOS 14 or later, and currently supports Apple silicon Macs. It is not Apple-notarized.

Choose Hey Mac if you want one utility for both everyday face unlocking and protecting individual apps.

2. Glance

Glance focuses on making face unlocking feel like a natural part of macOS.

Its interface lives around the MacBook notch, expanding into a small animated panel when the camera starts scanning your face. On Macs without a notch, it displays a floating pill instead. You can also disable the animations entirely.

Behind that interface, Glance uses on-device facial recognition and configurable liveness checks. You can enroll multiple identities or different appearances, select which camera to use, and decide when scanning should begin.

It offers two levels of liveness detection. The stronger setting attempts to distinguish a real face from photographs using visual cues such as movement, geometry, and reflections. The developer explicitly acknowledges that even this setting cannot reliably defeat a convincing video.

There is another important detail: Glance stores an encrypted copy of your Mac login password and types it at the lock screen after successful recognition. It does not replace macOS authentication.

Glance is free, open source, and supports macOS 15 or later on Apple silicon and Intel Macs.

Choose Glance if you mainly want face unlocking with a refined interface, camera controls, and adjustable recognition settings.

3. FaceUnlock

FaceUnlock takes a more straightforward approach. Its main purpose is to recognize you when your Mac wakes and enter your login password without making you type it yourself.

During setup, it captures seven different views of your face. When the lock screen appears, waking the display or pressing Space or Return can trigger recognition.

The app uses the ArcFace recognition model, processed locally through Core ML. It also checks for facial movement to make simple photograph-based impersonation harder.

There are useful controls for adjusting the matching threshold, adding face captures under different lighting conditions, and enabling automatic scans. A local activity log records unlock activity.

FaceUnlock encrypts your face data and stored login password, using macOS Keychain and Touch ID authorization to protect access. That still means giving a third-party application access to your Mac password, an important trade-off.

It's free and open source, although the bundled recognition model has a separate non-commercial research license. The current universal build supports Intel and Apple silicon, but its conflicting macOS requirements need checking. It is also not Apple-notarized.

Choose FaceUnlock if you want a dedicated lock-screen unlocking utility with adjustable recognition behavior and relatively little else.

4. FaceGate

FaceGate solves a different problem. It doesn't unlock your Mac's lock screen. Instead, it adds an authentication step before someone can open selected applications.

That makes it useful when your computer is already unlocked but you still want to keep personal messages, work applications, or other sensitive content away from casual access.

You can protect applications individually and choose how long they stay unlocked after authentication. There are also scheduled locking periods, automatic locking when your Mac sleeps, and options to require authentication before changing sensitive settings.

FaceGate supports face recognition, Touch ID, and password authentication. It can enroll up to three faces or alternate appearances, and uses head-turn challenges to discourage basic photo spoofing.

Its biometric data is processed locally and stored as encrypted face embeddings. Unlike the lock-screen tools above, its main authentication flow does not require storing your Mac login password for automatic sign-in.

FaceGate is free and open source. It requires macOS 14 or later and currently targets Apple silicon Macs. It is not Apple-notarized.

Choose FaceGate if your priority is locking individual applications rather than unlocking the entire Mac.

Is face unlock on Mac actually secure?

This is the part worth understanding before installing anything.

Apple's Face ID on supported iPhones uses specialized sensors to measure facial depth. A regular Mac webcam captures a two-dimensional image, so even software that checks for head movement, blinking, or other signs of life cannot offer equivalent protection.

Lock-screen apps introduce another consideration. Because macOS doesn't provide a general third-party API for authorizing a login using custom face recognition, tools such as Glance and FaceUnlock work by entering your existing password after verifying your face.

That means you're trusting additional software with sensitive credentials, even when those credentials are encrypted.

There are also installation concerns. Some of these apps are not notarized by Apple and may require you to override a macOS security warning. Don't disable security protections or run installation scripts you haven't reviewed simply to make an app work.

For sensitive work or important accounts, Touch ID and a strong Mac password remain the safer default.

Which one should you choose?

If you want face unlock and app locking in a single package, Hey Mac is the most complete option of these four.

Glance makes sense if you care about the lock-screen experience and want more control over how recognition behaves. FaceUnlock is another focused alternative, although its compatibility documentation needs clarification.

FaceGate is the clear choice when you don't need face recognition at the lock screen but want to restrict access to individual apps.

You probably don't need multiple face-unlocking utilities running simultaneously. They can compete for camera access and create unnecessary complexity around something as important as signing in.

And you may not need any of them. If Touch ID already works comfortably for you, adding webcam-based recognition introduces more moving parts without necessarily improving your security.

The appeal of these apps isn't that they've recreated Apple's Face ID. It's that independent developers have made a familiar convenience possible on hardware Apple hasn't equipped for it.

Compatibility and security details were checked against the developers' published documentation, including the Hey Mac website, Glance repository, FaceUnlock repository, and FaceGate repository. This is a documentation-based comparison, not a hands-on test of recognition accuracy, performance, or resistance to spoofing.