Is Touch ID getting less reliable?

[RecentlyConverted]

Is Touch ID getting less reliable? My partner and I have 8 iOS devices with Touch ID (most are second gen verisions of Touch ID). We have both recently found ourselves needing to put the passcode in as Touch ID has not recognised our fingerprints. Fingers clean (not wet), home button cleaned.

As far as I am aware our fingerprints don´t change over time.

Has anyone else had this problem?

We have deleted our old prints an re set up and all seems ok at the moment.

 

[jpn]

there was apple advice a little after Touch ID was first released to do exactly as you have done.
for circumstances such as you are encountering, the advice was to delete the old set of fingerprints and reenter them.
i did this 1 time only during the past 3 years, and it worked.
never encountered problems again.

 

[TimFL1]

It could be the oleophobic coating wearing off on the home button. Never encountered TouchID getting worse over time though. If it did it was always due to greasy fingers.

 

[bransoj]

I've had it happen and just setup my fingerprints again and they all worked fine again. It came after a spell of cold and wet weather where i'd been outside a lot and my fingers were rather dry and damaged. Suspect in turn the damage to the skin on my fingers had made it difficult to read my fingers to match the stored ones. Strangely i've had it happen again since whilst using cream over this cold spell to keep my skin in decent order with the prints from my right hand, i am right handed, not working. I've not set them up again but suspect they would work fine if i did.

I suspect its not so much an issue with Touch ID failing as much as your skin!!

 

[MisterSavage]

I've had it happen and just setup my fingerprints again and they all worked fine again. It came after a spell of cold and wet weather where i'd been outside a lot and my fingers were rather dry and damaged. Suspect in turn the damage to the skin on my fingers had made it difficult to read my fingers to match the stored ones. Strangely i've had it happen again since whilst using cream over this cold spell to keep my skin in decent order with the prints from my right hand, i am right handed, not working. I've not set them up again but suspect they would work fine if i did.

Yeah my skin get so dry in the winter. My 9.7 IPP has been pretty flaky with Touch ID. Makes me appreciate Face ID on my new IPP even more.

 

[NoBoMac]

Will ditto dry skin. Add in my case, cut my thumb a bit back, and now have a "scar" which is more prominent with dry skin.

 

[CTHarrryH]

For my touch ID device I found that I had to delete and re-add finger prints every 6 months or so to keep reliable.

 

[Baerok]

Back in the day, I also had issues with Touch ID being unreliable over time. The problem was that I was mainly scanning the tip of my finger when setting it up. I discovered that registering just the middle and side part of the finger greatly improved its efficiency and fixed all reliability issues. It required some getting used to when resting the finger to unlock, but after some time I didn't even have to think about it. It's been more than a year since I was setting up Touch ID on my iPad Pro and it works just as fast and reliable as on day one. Before that, I had to rescan my fingerprints every two weeks to make it work smoothly.

I guess the fingerprints on the fingertips (at least mine) may be more prone to wearing down and, therefore stop being recognized by the scanner with some time.