The second Developer Preview of Android 14 was just released earlier today, and as always, there are lots of new features and changes hidden under the hood. One such feature is the new Emoji Lab feature that lets you create a custom (or random) emoji wallpaper for your Pixel, and another feature is the subject of this article: auto-confirm correct PINs. Yes, a feature that custom ROMs have had for years now is finally making its way to stock Android.
While digging through Android 14 DP2, I managed to surface a new “auto-confirm correct PIN” toggle that appears when setting up a new PIN. This toggle doesn’t appear by default in DP2, and the feature itself currently doesn’t seem to work on my device. Still, it’s quite obvious what the feature is supposed to do given its description. There’s a warning that “confirming your PIN by tapping Enter is more secure than using auto-confirm”, but I’m sure those of you who use a PIN over a password for convenience won’t mind this tradeoff.
Still, in order to not sacrifice too much on security, this auto-confirm correct PIN toggle won’t appear if you set up a PIN that’s less than 6 digits in length. Speaking of PIN length, when the feature flag to enable the “auto-confirm correct PIN” toggle is flipped, Settings also changes the text that’s shown when setting up a PIN. Instead of just saying that the “PIN must be at least 4 digits”, it now adds “but a 6-digit PIN is recommended for added security.” (I’m unable to share a screenshot of either this text or the page where the “auto-confirm correct PIN” toggle is shown since these windows have FLAG_SECURE applied to them, which blocks me from taking a screenshot.)
The recommendation to use a 6-digit instead of a 4-digit PIN is long overdue, especially in light of a recent report by The Wall Street Journal which shed light on a big problem: Attackers can gain access to your Apple or Google Account simply by seeing you enter your PIN, as that’s all that’s needed to reset the password on your account. If you aren’t using a password instead of a PIN already, I recommend you change your screen lock. If you feel that a password is too inconvenient, perhaps a longer PIN with this new “auto-confirm correct PIN” feature may be a decent compromise.
If you decide you want to enable or disable this feature after you've already set up a PIN, you can go to Settings > Security & privacy > Device lock > Screen lock and tap the cog icon. Here, you'll have access to an "auto-confirm unlock" toggle that lets you toggle this feature on/off.
As I mentioned before, though, this “auto-confirm correct PIN” feature isn’t available by default in Android 14 DP2 (and currently doesn’t work for me). It’s possible Google could scrap this feature ahead of the stable release later this year.