Our phones hold a lot of personal information, which means that most people get intimidated at the thought of someone else messing with their smartphone. What’s worse is what can happen if you lose your smartphone completely.
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Thankfully, modern devices come with many security options. It’s easy to protect your device when out and about. But what to do when you are safe at home? It’s a pain to manually unlock your phone every time you want to use it.
Android Smart Lock lets you keep your phone unlocked at all times under certain circumstances. But can you keep your phone unlocked when connected to your home Wi-Fi network? let’s take a look.
What is Google Smart Lock?
Google Smart Lock first hit devices with Android 5.0 Lollipop. Originally known as Android Smart Lock, Google Smart Lock allows you to specify certain circumstances where your device’s lock screen protection will remain off.
You can enable and configure these options by going to Settings > Security > Smart Lock (this may vary slightly depending on your device). Enter your PIN, then you can select the Smart Lock option you want.
It is also possible to use several smart lock methods in conjunction. Here’s how they work.
on-body detection
With this option, once it’s unlocked, your Android device will remain unlocked as long as it detects motion, as long as you hold or move the device. Your phone will automatically re-lock when you put it down.
On-body detection presents some security issues. The lock mechanism doesn’t always activate immediately after you put the device down. Also, it can sometimes take longer if you are in a car, train, bus or other form of transportation.
trusted place
Use this option and your Android device will remain unlocked in the vicinity of a specific location. Once you enable Trusted Locations, your device will find your location using GPS. If the prompt shows that you are within range of a specified location, it will be unlocked.
Trusted Places is a handy unlocking tool. Like other options, however, it has its limitations. For example, if you live in an apartment building, Trusted Places may find it extremely difficult to differentiate between your apartment and your neighbors’ residences. Since the GPS location is almost identical and the range of unlocking can cover multiple apartments, your device can remain unlocked outside your home.
Although trusted locations can take into account your Wi-Fi connection, you can’t ask your phone to remain unlocked when connected to a certain network. However, there are some workarounds that allow you to unlock your phone when connected to a Wi-Fi network. We’ll cover more on these in a moment.
reliable equipment
You can keep your Android device unlocked if it’s connected to a different trusted device. For example, you can set your smartwatch, in-car Bluetooth speaker or fitness tracker as a trusted device. Then, while the two devices share a connection, the Android phone will remain unlocked.
Trusted devices use a Bluetooth connection to check the Smart Lock status. If for any reason the Bluetooth connection between your devices is turned off, Smart Lock will be disabled and your device will be locked.
voice match
On some Android devices, mostly older hardware, if you use Google Assistant, you can use the Voice Match option to keep your Android phone unlocked. Smart Lock recognizes the tone and changes of your voice to create a unique unlocking tool.
If you turn on Voice Match, “OK Google” becomes the unlock tool. Check out our guide on how to use Google Assistant to lock and unlock your phone, as well as easy video walkthroughs. Unfortunately, Google removed this option in Android 8 Oreo and above, but it still works on older devices.
How to Unlock Your Phone When Connected to Wi-Fi
One obvious Android Smart Lock defaults is the option to keep your device unlocked when you’re connected to a specific Wi-Fi network. You can solve this problem with the Automate app; Here’s how to keep your Android device unlocked when connected to Wi-Fi.
Please note that the following instructions only work on devices running Android 5.0 or older, ruling out the vast majority of modern Android devices. Using Wi-Fi to unlock your device is considered unsafe and Google has removed this functionality.
Automate is a user friendly Android automation app. You can do this for our intended purpose of staying unlocked over Wi-Fi.