Biometric Authentication on remote devices

Biometric authentication is a process of enhancing security of applications by using biological or behavioral attributes of individuals to verify their identity. Examples of biometric authentication include fingerprint scanning, facial recognition, DNA matching, retina scanning, etc.

App Live enables you to test your apps that require biometric authentication, by using the Biometric Authentication setting on select remote BrowserStack devices.

Supported apps and devices

App Live supports Biometric Authentication on the following apps and devices:

Enable Biometric Authentication setting for your app

Your setup session takes up to 60 seconds to complete.

Test your app using Biometric Authentication

After you enable Biometric Authentication, follow these steps to test your app:

1. In your app, trigger the biometric authentication workflow.
2. On the Biometric Authentication prompt, click Pass, Fail, or Cancel to test authentication success or failure scenarios. BrowserStack App Live attempts to closely mimic the biometric authentication behaviour on real devices. See the table in the Supported app behavior section for more details.
   

Supported app behavior

Based on your platform, refer to the following tables to understand the scenarios supported by BrowserStack App Live for Biometric Authentication:

• Android
• iOS

Scenario	Action	Behaviour
Pass biometric authentication	To pass biometric authentication, click Pass on the pop-up.	The biometric authentication is passed and the app behaves as designed.
Fail biometric authentication	On real Android devices, biometric authentication fails after five incorrect/unsuccessful attempts. Hence, on BrowserStack Android devices, click Fail five times to actually fail biometric authentication.	The biometric authentication is considered failed and - if you do not have a fallback defined, you should see the error code, ERROR_LOCKOUT. Also, you will not experience the 30-sec wait period like on real Android devices. - if you have a fallback defined in your app, BrowserStack App Live displays another pop-up to simulate device passcode. This pop-up can be closed by clicking either Pass or Cancel. Note: On real devices running Android above version 15, the device locks itself after five failures. However, in such cases, on BrowserStack devices, biometric authentication will directly get cancelled with the ERROR_LOCKOUT error code. Similarly, for devices running Android versions lower than 10, since Android does not offer a default fallback mechanism, the device passcode screen is not displayed.
Cancel biometric authentication	To cancel biometric authentication, click Cancel on the pop-up.	When you click Cancel on BrowserStack devices, biometric authentication is cancelled and the BIOMETRIC_ERROR_USER_CANCELED error code is sent. If you have defined custom logic for cancellation after a certain number of failures, biometric authentication is cancelled and the BIOMETRIC_ERROR_CANCELED error code is sent.

On iOS, if the Biometric Authentication prompt does not show up and the test passes automatically, then contact our Support team.

Scenario	Action	Behaviour
Pass biometric authentication	To pass biometric authentication, click Pass on the pop-up.	The biometric authentication is passed and the app behaves as designed.
Fail biometric authentication	To fail biometric authentication, click Fail on the pop-up.	The biometric authentication is failed and the app behaves as designed.
Cancel biometric authentication	To cancel biometric authentication, click Cancel on the pop-up.	The biometric authentication is cancelled and the app behaves as designed.