Windows Hello™ style authentication for Linux. Use your built-in IR emitters and camera in combination with face recognition to prove who you are.

Using the central authentication system (PAM), this works everywhere you would otherwise need your password: Login, lock screen, sudo, su, etc.

Howdy is currently available for Ubuntu/Debian and Arch Linux. If you’re interested in packaging Howdy for your distro, don’t hesitate to open an issue.

Note: The build of dlib can hang on 100% for over a minute, give it time.

Run the installer by pasting (ctrl+shift+V) the following commands into the terminal one at a time:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:boltgolt/howdy
sudo apt update
sudo apt install howdy

This will guide you through the installation.

Install the howdy package from the AUR. For AUR installation instructions, take a look at this wiki page.

You will need to do some additional configuration steps. Please read the ArchWiki entry for more information.

After installation, you need to let Howdy learn your face. Run sudo howdy add to add a face model.

If nothing went wrong we should be able to run sudo by just showing your face. Open a new terminal and run sudo -i to see it in action.

If you're curious you can run sudo howdy config to open the central config file and see the options Howdy has. On most systems this will open the nano editor, where you have to press ctrl+x to save your changes.

The installer adds a howdy command to manage face models for the current user. Use howdy --help or man howdy to list the available options.

Usage:

howdy [-U user] [-y] command [argument]

The easiest ways to contribiute to Howdy is by starring the reposotory and opening github issues for features you'd like to see. If you want to do more, you can also buy me a coffee.

Code contributions are also very welcome. If you want to port Howdy to another distro, feel free to contact me.

Any python errors get logged directly into the console and should indicate what went wrong. If authentication still fails but no errors are printed you could take a look at the last lines in /var/log/auth.log to see if anything has been reported there.

If you encounter an error that hasn't been reported yet, don't be afraid to open a new issue.

This script is in no way as secure as a password and will never be. Although it's harder to fool than normal face recognition, a person who looks similar to you or well-printed photo of you could be enough to do it.

To minimize the chance of this program being compromised, it's recommend to leave Howdy in /lib/security and to keep it read only.

DO NOT USE HOWDY AS THE SOLE AUTHENTICATION METHOD FOR YOUR SYSTEM.