How to Add A Fingerprint to your Android Phone?

First off, props to you for trusting your girlfriend with your smartphone. A lot of people I know see their smartphone as sacrosanct, a secret box that is not available for anyone else to peruse, whether a parent, child or partner. Me? My kids have long since been able to unlock my Apple iPhone and while I don’t encourage them to dig through everything — in particular some of my text messages are not for children’s eyes — I don’t fundamentally have a problem with it.

The LG V20 is similar to the Apple iPhone 7 in that both have a fingerprint-unlock feature, which is pretty magical. On the V20, however, the scanner and main button is located on the back of the phone, a feature that takes a bit of getting used to! In fact, I have a video review of the LG V20 if you’re curious about my take on the phone. There are plenty of other fingerprint enabled Android smartphones, of course, including the Samsung Galaxy S7, Google Pixel and the Huwai Mate 9.

All of them work the same way: when you first set up the phone out of the box, it prompts you to scan your own finger to set up an initial unlock. With phones where the scanner’s on the front, I like to use my thumb, but with its scanner on the back of the device, I scanned my forefinger for the LG V20. Once you have that first finger, though, subsequent fingers / thumb scans are all done through the Settings app…

Start in “General” Settings:

Here you’ll have to swipe down until you find the “Fingerprints & security” section:

Now a tap on “Fingerprints & Security” makes it fairly clear how to proceed. Well, sort of:

There’s nothing that indicates which of the options lets you add a new fingerprint to the scanner database, but it turns out that if you select “Fingerprints” you’ll have the option of deleting a current scan, changing your preferences or, yes, adding a new fingerprint to the database.

Let’s have a look. Tap on “Fingerprints“.

Ah yes, this is pretty private info and you don’t want just anyone adding their fingerprint so it’s going to prompt you for your PIN. You do still remember that even with the fingerprint scanner, right??

Enter it — correctly! — and you’ll see how things are set up:

Notice here you can change what the fingerprint lets you accomplish, including disabling the screen unlock feature if you want to really make sure you remember your PIN for a few days, or unlocking locked content in your Gallery or QuickMemo+ apps. By default, I have the fingerprint able to unlock the Screen lock, but not sufficient to unlock Gallery photos or notes in QuickMemo+ that I’ve locked.

To add a fingerprint tap on “Add fingerprint“. Now you or your girlfriend will be prompted to tap on the fingerprint sensor while moving and adjusting the finger angle. This is so that the sensor gets data for a wide area of your finger so you don’t have to have precisely the same angle the next time you use the scanner.

Since it’s impossible to screen capture the process, I took a photo of the screen:

Once you’re done and meet all the requirements of the fingerprint scan recorder app (which can be a bit of a pain as you tap and tap and tap to get coverage) Android will finally tell you that it’s accomplished:

That’s it. Tap on “OK” if you’re done, lock the phone, and hand it to your girlfriend to unlock.

Done!