One of the best things about the touch bar that Apple introduced on its MacBook Pros some years ago was that the sensor on the right of the Touch Bar could be used as a fingerprint sensor for logging in and authenticating Apple Pay payments, among other things. When Apple abandoned the touch bar, the Touch ID sensor survived and is now on the keyboard of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Apple also makes Magic Keyboard with a numeric keypad that also has a Touch ID sensor. In this article, we’ll show you how to set up fingerprint on MacBook Air, Pro, and any other Mac or keyboard with a Touch ID sensor.

What is Touch ID?

Touch ID on Mac is the same as on the iPhone and iPad. It’s a fingerprint sensor that, when enabled, allows you to use your fingerprint to log in to your Mac, authenticate where you would normally use your login password, and make payments with Apple Pay. You can set it up with just one fingerprint or add more than one for your convenience.

Is Touch ID secure?

Yes. Touch ID doesn’t store an image of your fingerprint. Instead, it creates a mathematical representation of the section of your fingerprint it uses to identify you. That mathematical representation is then stored in your Mac’s secure enclave — security architecture found in Apple’s M-series silicon chip. There’s a 1 in 50,000 chance of that section of your fingerprint matching a section of someone else’s fingerprint, compared to a 1 in 10,000 chance of guessing a four-digit passcode. And you only get five chances to try Touch ID before you need to use your password. In addition, the mathematical representation of your fingerprint never leaves your Mac.

How to set up your fingerprint

The first thing you need to do to use your fingerprint on your MacBook is to give macOS something to compare it to. So, you need to scan the fingerprints you want to use. Here’s how to turn on Touch ID on Mac:

  1. Go to the main Apple menu > System Settings > Touch ID & Password.
  2. Click Add Fingerprint and type in your login password followed by Return.
  3. Follow the instructions on the screen to scan your fingerprint.
  4. When you’re done, you will see a fingerprint in the window with the name ‘Finger 1’.
  5. Toggle ‘Use Touch ID to unlock your Mac’ to on.
  6. Use the toggle switches to turn on anything else you want to use Touch ID for.

How to add another fingerprint

Once you’ve set up Touch ID with one fingerprint, it’s easy to add another:

  1. Go to System Settings > Touch ID & Password.
  2. Click Add Fingerprint.
  3. Type in your login password and press Return.
  4. Follow the on-screen instructions to scan a different finger.
  5. When you’re done, you’ll see another fingerprint in the window called ‘Finger 2’.

How to rename fingerprints

Finger 1 and Finger 2 aren’t very descriptive names. Luckily, you can call them whatever you want. Click the text of the fingerprint name in the Touch ID & Password window, select the text, and type a new name.

How to delete a fingerprint

If you have added a few fingerprints and no longer want to use one or more of them, you can delete them:

  1. Hover over the fingerprint you want to delete with the mouse pointer.
  2. Click the ‘x’ in the top left corner.
  3. Enter your password and click Unlock > Delete.

How to keep your Mac running smoothly

Naming fingerprints is just one thing you can do to keep your Mac organized. There are many more. And lots of them will help keep your Mac stable and running smoothly if you do them regularly. These tasks include reindexing Spotlight, thinning out Time Machine snapshots, repairing disk permissions, and flushing DNS cache.

We could recommend doing them all manually. But they are difficult to do and very tedious, not to say time-consuming. So, we’ve got a better way — the Performance feature that comes with CleanMyMac. It scans your Mac and offers you a list of maintenance tasks that should be run. It will then recommend them to you, and you can run them with one click or review them and decide for yourself which to run and which to not bother with. Get started with a free CleanMyMac trial. Then, open the app and click Performance > Scan > Run or review recommended maintenance routines.

Touch ID uses a sensor on your Mac to scan your fingerprint and use it to authenticate access to your Mac and Apple Pay payments, autofill passwords, and other places where you might otherwise need to type in your password. Follow the steps above to set up your fingerprint on your Mac.