The second Developer Preview of Android 14 was released just earlier today and as always there are many new features and changes hidden under the hood. One of those features is the new Emoji Lab feature that lets you create a custom (or random) emoji background for your Pixel, and another feature is the subject of this article: automatic confirmation of correct PINs. Yes, a feature custom ROMs have had for years is finally making its way to Android.
While digging through Android 14 DP2 I managed to surface a new “auto-confirm correct PIN” toggle that appears when setting a new PIN. This switch is not shown by default in DP2 and the feature itself doesn’t seem to work on my device at the moment. Still, it’s pretty obvious what the function is supposed to do given its description. There’s a warning that “confirming your PIN by tapping Enter is more secure than auto-confirming”, but I’m sure those of you who use a PIN instead of a password for convenience won’t mind this trade-off .
But in order not to sacrifice too much on security, this automatic confirmation of the correct PIN will not be displayed if you set a PIN that is less than 6 digits long. Speaking of PIN length, when the feature flag to enable the “automatically confirm correct PIN” switch is flipped, Settings also changes the text that appears when setting a PIN. Instead of just saying the “PIN must be at least 4 digits”, it now adds “but a 6 digit PIN is recommended for added security.” (I can’t share a screenshot of this text or the page where the “Automatically confirm PIN correct” switch appears, as these windows have FLAG_SECURE applied, which prevents me from taking a screenshot.)
The recommendation to use a 6-digit rather than a 4-digit PIN is long overdue, especially in light of a recent report from The Wall Street Journal which sheds light on a major problem: attackers can gain access to your Apple or Google account simply by seeing you enter your PIN, as that’s all it takes to reset your account’s password. If you’re not already using a password instead of a PIN, I recommend changing your screen lock. If you find that a password is too inconvenient, a longer PIN code with this new “auto-confirm correct PIN code” feature can be a good compromise.
If you decide to enable or disable this feature after you have already set up a PIN, go to Settings > Security & privacy > Device lock > Screen lock and tap the gear icon. Here you have access to an auto-confirm unlock switch that allows you to enable or disable this feature.
As I mentioned earlier, this “Automatically confirm correct PIN” feature is not natively available in Android 14 DP2 (and is currently not working for me). It’s possible that Google will remove this feature ahead of its stable release later this year.