How to control Android with your face

A lot of us probably take our hands for granted because there are people out there who cannot use their hands or have limited motion with their hands. This means that things we do daily, like interact with our phones, is something that these people might have trouble doing. This is why accessibility features are important.

Google has baked quite a number of accessibility features into Android, but one of the more interesting accessibility features Google introduced is the ability to control your phone using facial gestures using Camera Switches. This means that for certain commands, you can use your face instead of your hands/fingers.

Even if you have no mobility issues with your hands, we reckon that using some of these facial gestures could still be pretty cool and fun to do, so here’s how you can set it up.

Control Android with facial gestures

1. Launch Settings
2. Scroll down and look for Accessibility
3. In the Accessibility menu, look for “Switch Access” (Samsung calls it “Installed Services”)
4. Toggle on Switch Access and agree to grant it permission for full control of your device
5. Select “Camera Switch” and tap Next
6. Tap Download
7. Select “Two switches (recommended)” and tap Next
8. Select “Linear scanning (except keyboard) and tap Next
9. Select a facial gesture and tap Next
10. You can now choose the size of the gesture, so make it smaller if you want to be more subtle, or larger if you don’t want to accidentally activate certain functions
11. Tap on Edit assignment and choose what you want that facial gesture to do

Right now, the amount of things you can do using facial gestures is a bit limited, but we imagine that over time Google will expand on it and give users more options, so take it for a spin if it’s something you’re interested in trying out for yourself.