Google has removed the NFC option from Smart Lock. When I approached google support about it they sent me to Samsung for answers. I spoke to Samsung tier two support today and they told me that Google has discontinued it because it was too buggy and will not be adding it back to any version of Android. Google told Samsung they are tinkering with an app that will give the same functionality but it won’t be native to the OS. There is no guarantee that they’re going to produce the app at all and its not lickly that it will work on Android versions older than the currently supported ones…
I understand that Smart Lock had it issues but many of us were willing to deal with it. I’m willing to implant foreign objects into my body so I can deal with a few glitches from my phone.
I understand that rooting and macros can accomplish the same results on some devices, but not all, and that’s even more problematic, most people won’t be able to do all that.
I don’t know how much of an issue this is for everyone in this community but for me it’s huge. I could really use some imput…
Thank you
…The support person I spoke to accually has an NFC ring… I thought that was cool… she wants an implant, kinda cool as well…
Bummer. But on my phone “smart lock” never did unlock the phone. It only kept it awake after you unlocked it with some other method. Did your phone actually unlock from sleep with NFC?
I called OnePlus tech support and got a super helpful rep, basically she said Android didn’t support NFC unlock but you could get it implemented by rooting and installing Xposed.
I still unlock my LGV20 with my xNT. The screen won’t wake up from sleep, but after I press power to wake the screen I can unlock with my implant. When is Android supposed to be losing this feature?
I had to preform a factory reset on my phone. When I did and lost all my settings the list of trusted tags that was stored was lost.
What was explained to me is that if you still have trusted tags set up in your device then it should still be working just like it did. They have removed the ability to add NFC as a trusted device. Once the tags are removed they can’t be added back.
On either of my devices all I have is Bluetooth as an option for trusted devices.
So if your NFC Smart Unlock is working do not remove your stored tags because you can’t add them back to the system.
I wish I had a device that was working and had tags stored in it so I could test this. I’m going to a lil mobile store today to dig through their trade-in box. My hope is to find a phone that hasnt been updated to do some testing with it.
A member of the RFID Implantees Facebook group actually talked to Google Support about it and it seems the problem is a bug, not by design… so maybe there is hope it will be fixed.
That would be great. Until then I guess its back to a rooted phone and custom Rom. Not that that’s so bad it just a pain to maintain and it has its share of issues.
Well so we wait and hope for a good solution while saying a quiet prayer to the gods of Google.
I don’t know… I’m disappointed for sure.
Roms are a great option for the people who can do that to their phones. Some don’t have the skills, others have phones not capable of being rooted, and some just don’t want to change their phones.
We need a solution that everyone can implement. I know that the NFC rings have a companion app that allows them to unlock the phone. I’m not familiar with how the rings and app work together to this make it happen or if normal NFC tags are capable of being paired in the same way.
Their app is proprietary to the Rings this much I know.
…Would an app even be a possibility for regular tags?
This works on some platforms. I’m going a mobile phone repair shop/store this week where they let me tinker with phones to test this app on as many phones as I can.
not in any safe or secure way. google removed the NFC channel from SmartLock a long time ago, and anything else you find on the appstore is just a “hide and seek” game played with an app window that simply wants to “stay on top” of everything else until you unlock it… but it’s not a locked. all the security built into android is totally turned off with those apps so its really not worth it.
the only way to make it really work would be to root your phone and install an older ROM with nfc enabled smartlock still working…
Hey, I’ve followed your guide but smart lock still is nowhere to be seen. Under trusted agents I have smart lock enabled, but it’s nowhere in the settings. I know it’s an old post, but has it just stopped working altogether?
Google stopped supporting NFC unlock a few years ago because they didn’t think there were enough users to continue devoting dev resources to maintaining it.
The Xposed framework NFC unlock is no longer available either as far as I know
Seems to be the case unfortunately, NFC unlock is long abandoned. Even the xposed module seems to be abandoned for some time so I doubt it would work without rebuilding it. Not aware of any custom ROMs that offer NFC unlocking either. Seems like the popularity/convenience of face/fingerprint unlock killed out any work being done towards preserving NFC unlock as an option, even within rooting communities.
Well, that’s depressing. If you search the web you get all those articles on nfc unlock via smart lock and I bought a nfc ring for like a dollar because most times I can’t unlock the phone with the fingerprint (dirty hands or gloves) and face recognition is weird and uncomfortable to hold the phone straight at your face . Any other ideas on how to use my nfc ring besides as paperweight or a normal ring?
In regards to your phone, perhaps either use it as a businesses card or link sharing (write a vcard or a link to it, you can get pretty creative with it). You could also automate things on your phone using tasker or other services with the NFC ring being the trigger.
Lastly, there are plenty of projects on here where people have used their implants to do stuff like starting motorcycles, opening garage doors, household automation such as lights and much more. I’d recommend browsing around and see what peeks your interest, you should be able to use your ring for a lot of that instead of a chip fairly easily.
Sucks unlocking wasn’t kept in android but even a simple NFC ring is far from a paperweight. Best of luck!
Just to clarify my hunch as to why Smart Lock removed NFC support… I think it has to do with smart unlock needing to operate NFC while the phone is locked. This interferes directly with Google pay features which need to operate while the phone is locked. I think it’s pretty clear that between these two applications for NFC, Google is going to choose Google pay over smart unlock.
Many thanks for your suggestions, I’m sorry I felt like a bummer and an ungrateful person when I called nfc rings paperweight. It was just 4am frustration because I rooted my phone following guides on how to enable nfc unlock and, to my fault for not enough research, was for nothing. I appreciate your suggestions. I might get a nfc reader to unlock my pc. I’m studying computer science and I should be able to maneuver around windows better than on Android. Never thought about getting an implant though, do they cause any trouble if, for example, you need to have an xray/mri done?
