Fast user switching via Touch ID/power button?

[ignatius345]

I haven't found this documented anywhere, and it works only sporadically, but I've noticed that on my 2020 MacBook Air, I can fast user switch sometimes by pressing the power/Touch ID button twice.

When I do it, it seems it's reading my fingerprint immediately, and it just switches directly to another account. I have three accounts set up: one personal, one work, and one household guest* account.

But, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it switches back and forth between Personal and Work, other times it tries to also cycle through the Guest account which isn't logged in. Sometimes pressing the button twice does absolutely nothing.

It's frustrating, because it's a very quick and handy use for a button that otherwise rarely gets pressed -- but I can't reproduce the user switching consistently. I've found no mention of this on Apple's site.

Anybody else have any experience with this?

edit 1:

OK, did a little more digging and found this.

How to Switch Users Instantly With TouchID on macOS

Ever wish you could switch users instantly by pressing a button? Thanks to TouchID on the MacBook Pro, all it takes is the correct fingerprints.

www.howtogeek.com

I'm still not entirely sure why it doesn't trigger consistently.

edit 2:

Turns out that when you switch, it picks an account that matches the fingerprint you're using (makes sense).

Turns out I'd registered both my right thumb and right index finger for both my Personal and Work accounts. But for the Guest account, I'd registered only my index finger. So when I press with my thumb, it toggles between Personal/Work, and if I press with the index finger, it toggles between Personal/Work/Guest. I suppose if you're someone who has multiple user accounts, you could assign them to different fingers, which is pretty cool.

That said, it still just fails to work sometimes, and isn't mentioned by Apple as far as I can tell. So I guess it's an undocumented feature that maybe doesn't work reliably. Still interested to hear others' experiences.



* This is just a generic user account that's not tied to any particular Apple ID. I use FileVault and the official Guest Account feature you can configure in Users & Groups forces a restart to log into it if the disk is encrypted.

 

[chabig]

That's neat. I didn't know that. But you don't have to double-click. From the article, just press the switch once. Your double-click are probably confusing it.

 

[ignatius345]

That's neat. I didn't know that. But you don't have to double-click. From the article, just press the switch once. Your double-click are probably confusing it.

Yeah, noticed that and adjusted -- forgot to mention it. But I'm still not having it trigger 100% of the time for whatever reason, even with the single-press.

 

[chabig]

TouchID doesn't trigger 100% of the time either. It's probably because of that. If you're having real problems, try deleting your TouchID finger and rescanning it.

 

[ignatius345]

TouchID doesn't trigger 100% of the time either. It's probably because of that. If you're having real problems, try deleting your TouchID finger and rescanning it.

Eh. I'm finding my TouchID success rate is very high (like 95% or more of the time if I had to guess), but the success rate for the user switch press is much lower for some reason -- seems like about 25% of the time, it fails to work. I'll fiddle with re-registering fingerprints to see if that helps, but it should be working off the same match as using TouchID normally, so I'm not sure what the deal is here.

 

[Dr.D]

Found your thread on a google search. I just found this myself and was googling to try to figure it out, and how to make it more consistent. FWIW, what seems to get it to work fairly consistently is to let my finger rest on the TouchID sensor for a moment first, then press the power button. If it doesn't work, I use the fast-switching option in the menu, and then it seems to work again. Neat feature!

 

[PhysicsHammer]

I am having exactly the same issue as described above. My touchID works when trying to use it to confirm something about 95% of the time maybe, but switching between users works maybe 25% of the time... I think maybe it's more likely to work if I rest of my finger on the touchID for a second before pressing, and maybe a longer press might make it more likely to work.

I am coming to believe that it is more likely not that we are doing it incorrectly, but it is just implemented imperfectly on Apple's side.

I love the feature though, so I hope it gets up to about 95% effectiveness - if so it will be awesome. I use the same computer for work and personal, on different accounts, so it is extremely useful to be able to hot swap between users.

 

[mohebnia]

register different fingers for touch-id for each user and use specific finger (registered finger for target user account) to switch to account!

 

[TruthAboveAllElse]

I've also noticed this issue, still an issue on Sonoma. I filed a bug report at apple.com/feedback I'd encourage anyone else who comes across this to do the same.