There are many protections available in smartphones today to prevent anyone from accessing your data stored on them, however, not all of these methods are necessarily secure. Biometrics such as facial recognition or fingerprint reading may give hackers an opportunity to trick you into unlocking your phone and accessing personal data; For example, someone points the fingerprint reader at your finger while you're asleep! It may sound scary, but that doesn't mean we should permanently disable the fingerprint or facial recognition feature. There is a way on the iPhone that enables you to temporarily disable Face ID or Touch ID when it is unsafe or unwise to leave it.
In Android phones, there is a feature included with the system called “ Lockdown ” and we have previously explained how to activate it in detail. When the user activates this feature, all supported biometric unlocking methods, whether facial or fingerprint, are immediately disabled so that only the PIN, pattern or password can be used to unlock the phone. As noted, this is useful in some situations to get an extra layer of security for a while without permanently disabling these features. On the iPhone, the same can be done but in a hidden way, as there is no explicit option in the settings as in the Android.
In fact, there are three "hidden" ways to temporarily disable Face ID or Touch ID on the iPhone, but the easiest way is to press and hold the side power button with any of the volume buttons, pressing both at the same time for three seconds until the screen with the power off slider appears. Here, all you have to do is click on the "Cancel" option, and then you will be prompted to enter the passcode that you specified while activating Face ID or Touch ID. This way the iPhone will be locked and can only be unlocked using the passcode.
As you can see from the attached image above, before using this trick, I had the option to unlock the iPhone using the fingerprint reader (Touch ID) or by entering the passcode, but after applying the previous step, this is no longer allowed as the device asks to write the passcode first in order to activate the Touch ID again. This means that once you type the passcode correctly, Face ID or Touch ID functionality (depending on the iPhone type) will work again without any unlocking issues.