Fingerprint scanners are a great way to keep your devices securely locked, and not bother by inserting a PIN or a pattern code every time you’re trying to unlock them. Over the years, fingerprint scanners have managed to become extremely fast and reliable, much more reliable than facial scanning solutions out there. All that led to the inclusion of such sensor on a ton of devices out there, and most of those devices utilize fingerprint scanners for device unlocking purposes, and payment, but you can utilize a fingerprint scanner on your smartphone in a number of other ways, read on.
Applications such as ‘Fingerprint Swipes’ allow you to assign various actions to a fingerprint scanner on your device, though for this particular app, your device needs to run on Android 8.0 Oreo+ in order to work, so basically any version of Android Oreo will do, even Android P Developer Preview. That being said, your phone also needs to support an always-on fingerprint scanner, and by saying that, we mean a fingerprint scanner which works all the time, no matter if your device’s display is powered on or off. It’s important to clarify this, as OEMs tend to refer to fingerprint scanners which work only when the device’s display is powered off as “always on”, as you don’t need to press any physical keys beforehand, but in this case, your fingerprint scanner needs to wait for commands even after your phone gets unlocked. Why is that? Well, in order to utilize swipe up, down, left and right features of ‘Fingerprint Swipes’ app, you will need such functionality, as the app only works after the device has been unlocked, naturally.
So, once you install this application, and give it all the necessary permissions, you will be able to set various actions for the aforementioned gestures. So, for example, you can set it to toggle split screen once you swipe up on the fingerprint scanner, or to toggle a flashlight after you swipe left. There are a ton of options included in the Fingerprint Swipes app, ranging from switching songs and controlling device’s volume, all the way to controlling rotation lock toggle and quick app switching options. On top of that, you can also set some gestures to launch applications, instead of triggering actions / shortcuts, whatever you like. During our testing (the last couple of weeks), this application has been running great on the OnePlus 5T, as that is one of the device’s that has the always-on fingerprint scanner that is required for this application. Do keep in mind that plenty of phones do not have that option enabled, however, like the OnePlus 6, for example, at least not at the moment, so you cannot use it with that device, and a number of other phones out there. Fingerprint Swipes application is free to download in the Google Play Store (link has been included down below), and it’s also free to use, so you don’t have to worry about that.
