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Saturday, October 26, 2024

Windows: Enable Windows Hello on a Framework 13

I have had my Framework Laptop 13 for a few months now and I have gotten used to many of its features. The physical design is very nice and it has a premium feel to it in many ways.

However, one feature that I have been missing is additional biometrics, namely face recognition.
The screen that Framework uses for this laptop contains a camera that simply doesn't allow for facial recognition. The reason for this could be both a cost and a technology reason. 

This doesn't stop the user from having an external camera, personally I am running a Logitech Brio 4K through a docking station. With other computers I can use this but for some reason I couldn't use it with the Framework Laptop 13.

Research led me to finding a registry value and a Windows setting that needed to be changed.

You can look at "Settings --> Accounts --> Sign-in options" if you have a setting called "Sign in with an external camera or fingerprint reader." This should be turned on. For me, this was missing which resulted in Facial recognition (Windows hello) claiming that the function was not available on my device.

If you cannot find the option to allow external devices for biometric sign-in you can adjust the following key and value.

The reg file way

Create a reg file containing this information, run it as administrator and restart afterwards.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WinBio]

"SupportPeripheralsWithEnhancedSignInSecurity"=dword:00000001

The registry way

Start registry editor as admin and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WinBio and create a new key DWORD (32-bit) value named SupportPeripheralsWithEnhancedSignInSecurity which you then give the value 1.

The PowerShell way

To add the value needed you need to start PowerShell as an administrator.

New-ItemProperty -path "registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WinBio" -name SupportPeripheralsWithEnhancedSignInSecurity -PropertyType dword -Value 1