It’s a good idea to protect your phone with a PIN, pattern or password so that strangers can’t unlock your device and access your personal information. But it can be annoying having to actually enter your PIN, pattern, or password every time you want to use your phone — even when you’re at home or in another place where it’s unlikely your phone fall into the hands of evildoers.

Now Google’s making life a little easier on folks using their phones at a trusted place.

smart lock trusted places

Android 5.0 Lollipop introduced a new “Smart Lock” feature that allowed you to use your phone without entering a password when it’s connected to a Trusted Device via a Bluetooth connection. For example if your smartwatch, Bluetooth headset, or speaker is nearby the device lets you move past the lock screen with a simple swipe… no password or PIN required.

Now Google is rolling out an update as part of Google Play Services 6.5, and it lets you added Trusted Places.

That means if you have a device running Android 5.0 with the latest version of Play Services, you can choose locations from Google Maps and your phone will use the built-in location services to detect whether you’re at home, work, or another trusted location. If you are, you won’t need to enter a password to start using your device.

Play Services 6.5 is gradually rolling out, but if you don’t have it yet you may be able to install it manually — just make sure to grab the correct version for your operating system. Or be patient and wait for Google to push the update to your device.

via Droid Life and /r/Android

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7 replies on “Android 5.0 Trusted Places keeps your phone unlocked at home (or work, or wherever)”

  1. The program Delayed Lock already allows you to do much of that, by WiFi connection, BT connection or location.

  2. So anyone (including the police) can get into your phone when it is in your house, car, office, etc. No thank you. Entering a PIN is not that big of a hastle.

    1. I’m reasonably sure this is about manual access to the device and the law-enforcment/organized-crime back doors are another thing altogether.

  3. This should have some very quick mode select button in the quick access settings. And it would be nice if you could change it remotely.

    Might be nice most of the time but then you remember you left your tablet locally unlocked back with the babysitter. Or perhaps you’d like to switch the mode for the tablet that lives on the coffee table by the couch quickly for a party or when friends drop by – particularly with kids. Or you’re asked to lend your phone across a table, still easily within reach of your bluetooth connected watch which is keeping it unlocked.

    Any number of situations. Just a simple easy to reach switch to flick to take it from my default setup to on-device pin would be great.

    1. That’s a great suggestion, maybe that should be sent as a feedback to Google

  4. I was wondering why they didn’t have this instead of the bluetooth/nfc thing.

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