Secure locking mechanisms for smartphones have come a long way. Today, the use of patterns, passwords and passcodes is slowly fading away as manufacturers continue to equip their devices, including the budget handsets, with more contemporary mechanisms like fingerprint scanning and facial recognition.

The latter is the latest in town and nearly every smartphone vendor has some form of facial recognition mechanism on their devices, be it hardware or software-based. So far, most Xiaomi devices that support facial recognition make use of software and the front camera to unlock the phone when needed and apparently, Xiaomi is making this feature even more useful on supported devices.

For those taking part in the MIUI 10 beta program, there is a new feature that you might have not noticed. Beginning with beta 9.2.21, those with supported Xiaomi devices can now lock/unlock apps using the face unlock feature.

To get started, all you have to do is head to Settings > App lock > Face unlock and scan your face to add the data to the app unlock system. Once done, you can start enjoying faster access to your apps with no need of fiddling around trying to input your lengthy password.

As noted, the feature is still in beta, but Xiaomi says the MIUI team is working hard to bring it to the stable channel soon.

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