Long gone are the days when unlocking your phone required passwords, pin codes, or, as in the case of Android phones of the past, patterns! These days, all you need is one tap on your fingerprint sensing-device (or one glance at your phone) and the screen comes to life, like magic.
PC manufacturers haven’t caught up to this trend yet, still relying on passwords as a security measure — apart from a few laptops that come up with a built-in fingerprint sensor. Fortunately, you can use your phone to unlock your laptop as well. Not only is it much quicker and more efficient, but it also acts as an extra security measure.
For iPhone users, there are multiple apps that provide this functionality. Two of the best options are listed below,
You can use MacID to unlock your Mac using a passcode on your iPhone. Using MacID, whenever you open your Mac, your iPhone/iPad will prompt you to unlock your Mac using your phone. You can also use MacID to remotely lock/unlock your Mac.
Knock lets you walk up to your Mac, knock twice on your iDevice automatically unlocking it for you — without any passcode or anything
If you have an Android and a Mac, here’s what you can do to unlock your laptop using your phone,
Whenever you Mac goes to sleep automatically, or the screensaver begins, just open DroidID on Android and scan your fingerprint and your Mac can be unlocked without using a password.
You will also need to configure DroidID to start every time you start up your Mac. For more details, visit this guide.
Samsung just recently updated its Flow app to allow Windows 10 users to unlock their PCs using their phones’ fingerprint sensor.
Samsung Flow lets you can view notifications sent to your Android device on your PC, reply to text messages from your PC, share files between the two devices). Most importantly, your PC will now auto-unlock when you’re nearby with your phone.
If you don’t own a Samsung phone, there is no particularly easy way to unlock your Windows PC with your phone.
You will need to use a workaround — use EventGhost on your Windows PC to do the unlocking, AutoRemote to establish communication between your phone and your PC, and finally, use Tasker for automatically sending a signal to EventGhost via AutoRemote when certain conditions are met.
For a complete, detailed tutorial, you can follow this guide.
PC Lock will automatically lock your Windows PC when your phone is out of range and unlock it when it is in range.
Image — Cronofy