How to Block WhatsApp with Fingerprint or Facial Recognition

The large amount of personal and confidential information that we store on our mobile phones has meant that over time, we find today that most models on the market offer us some security system to unlock our phones. In this sense, fingerprint readers and facial recognition systems are the order of the day. WhatsApp is one of the apps that is installed in the vast majority of terminals and its great popularity and use means that many users have personal and confidential information in their chats. Therefore, we are going to show how to protect our WhatsApp conversations with our face or fingerprint.

It goes without saying that in order to use these security systems we need to have a device with a fingerprint reader and facial recognition function, since otherwise it will not be possible to configure these options in the messaging app. Now, if we have any of them, next we are going to show how to protect our chats with the fingerprint or our own face.

Block WhatsApp with Fingerprint or Facial Recognition

How to block WhatsApp with your fingerprint

Taking into account that the fingerprint reader is an element that we can find today in most terminals on the market, WhatsApp decided to add the function that allows us to protect access to the app with our fingerprint natively. Before this, it was necessary to configure it through the system settings, so we can do it anyway.

From WhatsApp settings

To activate this block through the app itself, the first thing we have to do is check that we have a version of WhatsApp that includes this option. If we have the app correctly updated, these are the steps we must follow:

  • We open the app on our phone.
  • We touch on the menu button or more options.
  • We enter the Account option.
  • We choose the Privacy option.
  • There we will find the option Fingerprint lock on Android, while if we are iOS users we will also have to enter Screen lock and then activate the Touch ID switch.
  • The messaging app will ask us to put our finger on the fingerprint reader for registration.
  • Next we will have to choose whether we want the app to be blocked automatically , after 1 minute of not using it or after 30 minutes.

WhatsApp

It is important to know that when activating this function, we will have to use our fingerprint to open WhatsApp whenever we are going to use the app and it is blocked.

From the system settings

From the system settings it is also possible to configure the WhatsApp lock with fingerprint. The options or routes that we are going to indicate may vary depending on the system version or the customization layer of the manufacturer of our mobile phone, but the steps to follow would basically be these:

  • We enter the system settings .
  • We choose the Security and privacy option.
  • We look for the Application blocking option .
  • We scroll to find the WhatsApp app and activate its switch.
  • Now, we go back to Settings> Security and Privacy.
  • We enter the option Fingerprint ID (it will ask us to enter the phone lock key).
  • We activate the option Access application blocking.
  • To confirm, it will ask us to indicate the PIN again and we will have it activated.

Activate facial recognition to protect access to WhatsApp

In the event that we want to use our own face to be able to unlock WhatsApp, on Android devices we will have to do it from the system settings, since it is a function that the famous messaging application does not offer natively as it happens with the of the fingerprint. For iOS devices, in the event that the iPhone model has TouchID and FaceID, we can activate it by following the steps we have just indicated in the previous section.

In the Google environment, the steps to follow are practically identical to those mentioned to activate the fingerprint unlock from the system settings. The first thing we have to do is enter the Settings of our mobile, touch on the Security and Privacy option and then on Application blocking . This will ask us to indicate the PIN code that we have chosen for the configuration of our fingerprint and then the list of applications installed on the mobile will appear.

WhatsApp

We look for WhatsApp , we activate the switch that is shown next to it and then, from Settings> Security and Privacy we enter the option Fingerprint ID or Face Recognition . Again it will ask us to indicate our security PIN and then we must activate the switch that appears next to the option Access the application block . To confirm, you will ask us to indicate the security PIN again and we will already have it activated.

We can also use third-party apps

As an alternative, we can always use a third-party app that allows us to add this function to our device, such as FingerSecurity . It is an application that has been specially developed to offer the possibility of blocking access to certain applications installed on the mobile with a fingerprint, including WhatsApp.

To be able to use it, it is necessary that we have a fingerprint reader and that our phone is compatible with the app. If everything goes well, once we install it on the mobile we will need to configure it, for which, it will ask us to choose an alternative PIN in case we ever have problems unlocking the app with our fingerprint.

Then, click on the icon with the «+» symbol that appears in the bottom right of the screen and then look for the WhatsApp application. We touch on it and then activate the WhatsApp switch is not protected . We will automatically see how this option changes and it is shown that WhatsApp is protected at the same time that the messaging application appears in the list of blocked applications of FingerSecurity. From that moment on, we will already be protecting our WhatsApp chats with a fingerprint.