It looks like Google is still working on face unlock for the Pixel 6

At the moment, face unlock on many Android smartphones is still admittedly nowhere near the level of Apple’s Face ID, but the option is still there for some phones. Google’s Pixel phones, like its 2021 flagship Pixel 6, does not have the option, but it looks like Google is still working on it.

In a post on Reddit by u/welp_im_damned, during their setup process of their brand new Pixel 6 smartphone, they were curiously given the option of choosing between patter, PIN, password, fingerprint, and face unlock.

What’s curious about this is that this isn’t the first time that Google has hinted at face unlock coming to the Pixel 6. Ahead of the phone’s launch, there were several leaks of the phone’s marketing materials that suggested that face unlock was a feature that was coming to the Pixel 6, but obviously it never made the cut.

Then last year, code spotted in the Android 12L Beta made references to the feature, but once again we didn’t see anything come of it. Now based on the latest screenshots posted on Reddit, it looks like the feature is still in development. The question here is whether or not Google will actually launch the feature.

The company has been known to work on features in the past that never made the cut. A good example would be dark mode for Android which took several generations before it actually made its debut, so based on this, maybe we shouldn’t hold our breath just yet.