It’s 2024 and the vast majority of Chromebooks don’t have fingerprint sensors. Biometric authentication has become the norm on smartphones, but most ChromeOS users are still typing in a password. (Having to enter your Google Account credentials so often in public seems like a bad idea.)
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There’s fortunately a PIN (at least six digits) option, which is most convenient on a touchscreen and somewhat awkward on a physical keyboard/row of numbers. Of course, it’s not faster than laying your finger on a reader.
Then there’s the ability to unlock your phone to skip the password on your Chromebook. Smart Lock would be enough if it were faster and a little bit more reliable. In my experience, I can’t get through the day without it failing at least once or twice.
Meanwhile, Google in January of 2022 said Wear OS Watch Unlock would also work with Chromebooks (and Android tablets). We just got the feature this December on Pixel phones, so hopefully we aren’t too far off and that it works better than Smart Lock.
It’s a real shame Google didn’t use Chromebook Plus to mandate fingerprint sensors on even $399 laptops. I would honestly trade in the 1080p camera requirement for that. Instead, we have two of the seven Plus Chromebooks on Google’s website shown with fingerprint unlock, but those advertised models — $499 and $699 — don’t actually have a sensor.
As such, you can only consistently find fingerprint readers on Chromebooks that near the $1,000 mark after all these years. The HP Dragonfly Pro Chromebook comes to mind, while the Asus ExpertBook CX54 Chromebook Plus also has it. Anecdotally, even the $999 Framework Chromebook does not offer a sensor. The component in question is $29 with support for Windows and Linux.
Hopefully, Google uses the next Chromebook Plus spec upgrade to require the inclusion of a reader. Even then, fingerprint sensors really shouldn’t be a luxury in this day and age.
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Top comment by Jerrod six
I have a Chromebook with a fingerprint sensor, yet when I go into the password manager It still requires me to enter a password to view passwords or edit them. I think this should be changed to accept a fingerprint or at least a PIN.
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