On iOS I have Privacy settings of Use passcode and Use biometric authentication ticked, and Ask again set to 1 minute. If I switch to another app and then come back to DTTG after a minute, it always asks me to enter my passcode. However, if I come back to DTTG after having unlocked my iPhone with FaceID, I can feel haptic feedback and DTTG unlocks without requiring a passcode.
I’d expect DTTG to always use biometrics with these settings.
That is, actually, a feature. Right after unlocking your phone, DEVONthink To Go does not require authentication again because it’s unlikely that within 30 seconds after unlocking your phone you got knocked down and some street robber takes your phone and goes straight to your databases.
I understand, but my question is, why does it not use biometrics each time? When I come back to DTTG4 from another app, it asks for the passcode.
That is in fact not what it should do. Noted.
We’ve just tested with the exact same settings. It correctly asks for Face ID when returning after more than one minute. We’ve still make it a peerie bit more reliable in case Face ID failed in the meantime, e.g., because you were not looking (which in turn lets it fall back to PIN entry).
Here, it asks for passcode 100% of the times I return to it from another app after the timeout period. I also changed the timeout to 3 minutes with the same result. This is on a iPhone 17 Pro, iOS 26.1, if that’s of any help.
Do you have allowed Face ID for DEVONthink To Go? Maybe it simply got deactivated somehow in the system settings for DEVONthink To Go?
That’s fixed it, thanks!
I have a further problem with biometric authentication, this time on iPadOS. I found biometric authentication (Touch ID) unreliable here too, for example, if I had Ask Again set to 5 minutes, it would ask every time I switched away from DTTG4 and back again. Also, the prompt for Touch ID would pop up, DTTG would minimise before I had a chance to use Touch ID, leaving the prompt over the home screen. Sometimes when this happened I could then open DTTG by clicking on it’s icon again; other times I had to kill DTTG and start it again. So I switched it off, but it still asks for TouchID when I open the app or switch back to it and, as above, I usually have to try several times or restart DTTG to get into it.
So now I’ve got Touch ID working intermittently and I can’t turn it off. The Privacy settings are: no passcode set, Use passcode not enabled Use biometric authentication not enabled, Ask again immediately.
Unlike with iOS, iPadOS 26.2 doesn’t have settings for biometrics for individual apps.
I’ve closed DTTG several times and I’ve restarted the iPad. How can I just dispense with passcode and biometric authentication completely for DTTG?