How to use MacOS's Touch ID on Terminal

I know... use a fingerprint scanner and never come back. No need to write passwords, pins or patterns. But on the terminal when we use the magic word sudo ask for your password... yuck!!!

Don't worry. It can be solved easily. Edit this file /etc/pam.d/sudo with your favorite editor. Mine is the VS Code because can deal with admin permission. Run this command on a terminal.

code /etc/pam.d/sudo

Add the following line on top

auth sufficient pam_tid.so

Extra

On the default terminal works like a charm, but on iTerm2 needs an extra configuration. Go to Prefs -> Advanced -> Allow sessions to survive logging out and back in and set the value to no.

Restart and enjoy it.

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That's All Folks!
Happy Coding 🖖

Comments

[kychanbi]

There is an extra step needed for some guys using display docks.
I followed the above steps, but got GUI password prompt instead of touchID

After I ran this. It works prefect now.
defaults write com.apple.security.authorization ignoreArd -bool TRUE


source: apple.stackexchange.com/questions/...

[Elvis McNeely]

Thanks! After applying this (and the instructions from the author) I started to get the biometric password prompt.

[Diego]

Awesome. Works!

[Brett Stevenson]

This is great! Just what I was looking for!

[phantomfactotum]

Bless your soul

[Ben Halpern]

Really slick UX here

[Miguel Tineo]

Just perfect! 👏

[Andrés Reyes Galgani]

Gracias amigo y ¡¡Viva Colombia!!

Saludos desde Chile 🇨🇱

[Camilo Martinez]

Con gusto Andrés!

[Moataz Elmasry]

Many thanks. Works great!!!

[Gabriel Basilio Brito]

Works like a charm

[Sethu Senthil]

Is there a way to make this work on the VS Code integrated terminal?

[Camilo Martinez]

I used to have this configuration, and also works on VS Code.

{
    "terminal.external.osxExec": "iTerm.app",
    "terminal.integrated.fontFamily": "MesloLGS NF",
    "terminal.integrated.fontSize": 14,
    "terminal.integrated.shell.osx": "zsh",
    "terminal.integrated.shellIntegration.enabled": true,
}