How to Use More than 5 Fingerprints With Touch ID on the iPhone 5S

While the Touch ID feature on the iPhone 5S certainly serves its usefulness, and has garnered overwhelmingly positive comments from reviewers and pundits, many have wished it was not limited to only 5 fingerprints. Well, as it turns out, it’s not! iMore points to a YouTube video that shows how you can use up to 50 fingerprints using TouchID!

Richard Devine, writing for iMore:

Call it a bug, a loophole, or an un-mentioned feature, but Touch ID on the new iPhone 5s will accept more than five fingerprints. How, you ask, when there are only five slots? The video above demonstrates the method, and we’ve verified that it does indeed work. Scanning five [or even 10] fingers instead of one will register all those fingerprints into just one slot.

While it’s certainly a neat trick, it  doesn’t come without a cost. Having tried it myself, I can attest that it does significantly affect the accuracy of Touch ID (although I was still able to get “acceptable” results). It’s also unclear whether Apple will keep this option open in future updates. If not, you might have to program your fingerprints back in again once the next update rolls out!

For more helpful tips, check out our full collection of tutorials by visiting our How-To category!

J. Glenn Künzler

Glenn is Managing Editor at MacTrast, and has been using a Mac since he bought his first MacBook Pro in 2006. He lives in a small town in Utah, enjoys bacon more than you can possibly imagine, and is severely addicted to pie.