Android Will Allow You to Lock Any App Behind Your Fingerprint or PIN

First spotted by 9to5Google, Android 17 QPR2 Beta 3 adds a native App Lock feature allowing you to lock any app you want behind your biometrics or phone PIN.

Apps have long been able to opt-in to locking themselves with your biometrics or your PIN, but this was up to app developers to implement.

Some manufacturers such as Samsung implemented this feature in their own proprietary operating systems, but now the feature will be a default part of Android.

All you have to do to lock an app is long-press it and the context menu will pop up showing you the option to lock the app.

The app lock feature is currently only available on Pixel devices for now but likely it will be expanded to more devices when the full QPR2 update launches.

iOS also shipped a similar feature in iOS 18 to great fanfare.

It's important to note that you shouldn't rely on the feature to protect your app data from advanced threats like state-level actors. It doesn't separately encrypt the app from the rest of your data and it still allows AI agents and some services to access the app if you allow it. You should mainly use this to protect against an unsophisticated attacker with physical access to your phone.

The new beta also brings other privacy and security enhancements as well.

The update brings protection against call forwarding fraud:

Android 17 QPR2 Beta 3 introduces new security restrictions on programmatic call forwarding to protect users from fraud. The system now parses and selectively restricts call-forwarding USSD codes (such as *21*) executed via the TelephonyManager.sendUssdRequest() API.

Apps attempting to do this via the sendUssdRequest() API will be blocked from doing so. If you manually try to dial call-forwarding codes, you'll be presented with a confirmation dialog in order to combat scams.

Unfortunately, Google Pixel 6 devices reportedly will not be receiving this update as they will have exceeded their support window by the time it fully releases, so if you're still using a Pixel 6 device it might be time to think about upgrading.