How To Lock/Unlock Apps with your Fingerprint On Galaxy Note 4/S5!

One of the cool features of Galaxy Note 4 is the fingerprint scanner which lets you unlock your screen with fingerprint.  By default you can do the following with Galaxy Note 4’s fingerprint scanner.

1. Fingerprint lock.

2. Website sign-in.

3. Verify Samsung account.

4. Pay with Paypal.

But you can’t lock apps with your fingerprint, which kinda sucks.   Fortunately, there is an awesome app that got you covered.  The FingerSecurity app enables Galaxy Note 4 (and also Galaxy S5, Galaxy S5 mini, and Galaxy Tab S) owners to do just that.  Below is the process of how it works.

Note:

– In order for FingerSecurity app to work, you must have already registered at least one fingerprint.

– The app works even when the screen security is not set to fingerprint.

– Samsung allows you to only register 3 fingerprints, if you registered all your 3 fingerprints, then you can unlock locked apps using all your 3 fingerprints.

– This app works on Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy S5, Galaxy S5 mini, Galaxy Tab S.

 

Steps:

1. Download “FingerSecurity” app From Here.

2. Open the app.

3. The apps will ask for your fingerprint, swipe through the bottom of the screen.

Unlock apps with Fingerprint using Galaxy Note 4

4. This is the main screen of the app which consists of your apps list.

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5. Swipe to the right to go to ”Settings” where you can enable the app to protect your apps.  The apps are not protected by FingerSecurity app as it’s shown in the top of the screen.

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6. Enable the app by pressing on the ”FingerSecurity” button.

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7. To lock specific apps, simply swipe left to the “App List”.

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I’ll lock Message app for example.

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Tap on the messages icon and this following will show up:

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Change No to Yes to protect the app.

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You will notice additional feature called “Use Custom Settings”.

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Enabling this feature will give us two more options for locking the app.

1. Unlocking the locked up with alternative password.

2. Settings timeout for the app.

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To Enable using alternative Password, We must first enable it inside the settings of the app.

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We can also set the timeout for the app by tapping on the “Timeout” button as shown below:

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The following screen will show up:

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We can keep the app unlocked until the screen locks or we can keep the app unlocked even when the screen is locked.

Additional Settings:

1. You can prevent the app to be uninstalled by others, this can be done from Settings > Advanced Security.

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When you tap on Advanced Security, below screen will show up asking us to enable the app as the device administrator.

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Tap on “Activate” then the below screen will show up,which is located in “Settings > Security > Device Administrator”.

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To activate FingerSecurity and prevent it from uninstalling, tick the box in front of the app icon.  It will ask you to input your fingerprint to verify.

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Now, FingerSecurity is protected and can’t be uninstalled unless you remove the app from your device administrator using your fingerprint.

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As we can see in the above screenshot, the uninstall option is disabled.

Another option is that you can show or hide fingerprint indicator while unlocking apps.

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You can also set the app to ask you for protecting new installed apps.

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You can also hide running FingerSecurity notification in the notification bar.

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Premium section of the app is where you have to pay in order to enable the premium features which includes the following features.

– Location Based Security

– Protected Notifications

– Themes

– Specific Fingers

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FINAL NOTES:

FingerSecurity fills the gap that Samsung left in its fingerprint powered products.  It does a great job of protecting apps and contains awesome features that you will like.  However, the app contains some bugs that we should be careful about.

(These notes are based on version 2.6.5 of the app which is updated on 19 March 2015).

1. DO NOT Hide your ”Gallery” app using this app. although the app protects gallery contents, but, when opening My Files app, you can still see the ”THUMBNAILS” of both pictures and videos.  It’s right that when you tap on thumbnails it will ask for your fingerprint and won’t let you see the full size pictures or videos until you do, but it’s still not a good thing to happen(You can use your phone’s private mode for hiding gallery contents in this case instead).

2. While there is an option for unlocking the app with alternative or custom password, I never managed to unlock the app with it as it gave me no choice of inputting alternative password.  Hopefully, the dev fixes these two issues within future updates!

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Rawand Haidar

Rawand is Petroleum Engineer.He is Super high on Android. Rawand has been blogging since 2011, written more than 150 articles including tutorials, news, reviews about Android. He is interested in all things Android. Follow Me on Twitter