Camilo Martinez

Posted on Oct 8, 2019 • Edited on Feb 7, 2024

How to use MacOS's Touch ID on Terminal

#macos #productivity #hacks

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 because with macOS Sonoma, there is now a supported option to enable Touch ID for sudo:



sudo cp /etc/pam.d/sudo_local.template /etc/pam.d/sudo_local
sudo nano /etc/pam.d/sudo_local

Uncoment the last line of the file by removing the # from the start of the line.



# sudo_local: local config file which survives system update and is included for sudo
# uncomment following line to enable Touch ID for sudo
auth       sufficient     pam_tid.so

Save changes with ctrl+x and overwritte the file.

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.

That's All Folks!
Happy Coding 🖖

Oldest comments (20)

Ben Halpern • Oct 8 '19

Really slick UX here

Andrés Reyes Galgani • Mar 9 '20

Gracias amigo y ¡¡Viva Colombia!!

Saludos desde Chile 🇨🇱

Camilo Martinez • May 14 '20

Con gusto Andrés!

Gabriel Basilio Brito • Apr 20 '20

Works like a charm

phantomfactotum • Jun 24 '20

Bless your soul

Brett Stevenson • Jul 17 '20

This is great! Just what I was looking for!

Moataz Elmasry • Dec 7 '20

Many thanks. Works great!!!

Sethu Senthil • May 25 '21

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

Camilo Martinez • Aug 17 '22

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,
}