Forget passwords, PINs, patterns, or fingerprints. It is now possible to unlock your Android phone using your voice. But beware this new option called Trusted Voice raises serious concerns among security experts..
Unlock your phone with a Google OK
You all remember the TV series of the 80s, K 2000, in which the hero Michael Knight (played by David Hasselhoff) commanded his car by voice. This television series unknowingly foreshadowed automatic speech recognition.
As often fiction meets reality. With Google Assistant, Android smartphone owners can now search, send messages, or control their phones using voice commands..
But it can also do much more. The latest version of Google Assistant includes a new function to lock or unlock your Android phone with a simple Google OK spoken aloud. Without further ado let's see how to use it.
Configure the Voice Match hands-free mode
Unlocking your phone using voice is as easy as answering an SMS. But curiously this functionality remains relatively unknown to the general public. We will immediately correct this situation..
Before you start you will need to make sure your device has the Google Assistant. The latter is normally provided by default on all devices running Android 7 and higher.
- Open the Google app
- Click on the Plus button at the bottom right of the window
- Select the Settings option
- Tap the Google Assistant section. If this last line does not appear on your phone screen, you will need to go to the Google application store and download Google Assistant from this link
Once the installation is complete, you will need to activate Google Assistant. To do this, simply go to the home page of your phone and then leave your finger pressed for a few minutes on the button used to return to the home screen.
A configuration module will offer you to perform a whole series of operations to activate the voice recognition system on your smartphone. You can then activate the voice unlocking device.
- Launch the Google app
- Click on the More button then on Settings and finally Google Assistant
- Select the Assistant tab
- In the section devices used, you will select the Telephone option
- Press the Unlock switch with Voice Match
Android will then ask you to repeat Ok Google or Hey Google several times so that the system gets used to recognizing your voice. This will prevent other users from unlocking your phone. Note that registration must be done in a relatively calm environment.
You should also know that this voice recognition device is not the most secure authentication system. In fact, security specialists have successfully unlocked a device using a recording similar to the owner's voice.
On some Android devices, this functionality has been completely removed. Smartphone manufacturers prefer to equip their phones with fingerprint sensors that are much more efficient and just as fast.