Forget the iPhone, Apple might be bringing under-screen Touch ID to the Mac

It’s been rumored for years that Apple is researching ways to install biometric sensors under the iPhone’s screen, thereby saving itself the need to put Face ID sensors in the Dynamic Island or Touch ID fingerprint readers in one of the buttons. What very few people expected was for Apple to focus on developing such a feature for the Mac-but a newly granted patent offers an intriguing hint of precisely that.

In U.S. patent 12,548,534, filed in January 2025 and granted this week (and promptly spotted by AppleInsider), Apple reveals its work on a project called, perhaps misleadingly, “Display with localized brightness adjustment capabilities.” But the real purpose of the concept is given away in the abstract, which discusses “an array of light sensors for capturing fingerprints of a user through an array of corresponding transparent windows in the display.”

So far, so unsurprising: Apple has been granted patents for what sound suspiciously like under-screen Touch ID on multiple occasions in the past. But what’s different from U.S. patent 10,824,837, for example, is the noticeable lack of anything to tie the research to the iPhone. Not in the wording: Apple is always as vague as it can get away with in that respect, referring consistently to electronic devices rather than smartphones, or giving long lists of possible applications. (In this latest patent Apple cites “a tablet computer, laptop computer, a desktop computer, a display, a cellular telephone, a media player, a wristwatch device or other wearable electronic equipment, or other suitable electronic device.”) But in the artwork.

The drawing for patent 10,824,837 is quite transparently a handheld device of some sort. Again, Apple keeps things vague: it could be a smartphone or a small tablet. But there’s no way in the world that’s a Mac. Compare this to 12,548,534, which is illustrated by a series of nondescript almost-square rectangles (with, notably, no human finger to give clues of scale) that could be taken as a representation of almost any Apple display, from the iPhone to the Studio Display. And AppleInsider takes this as a possible hint that the patent might be intended for non-iPhone applications such as the iPad (which would probably be the closest fit for the screen proportions) or even the Mac.

Macs aren’t an obvious use case for under-screen Touch ID. Whereas screen space is at a premium for the iPhone and iPad, Macs don’t have to give up any screen real estate for biometrics; their keyboards have built-in Touch ID sensors, and these don’t bring any obvious drawbacks. Putting sensors under their screens could lower the screen output quality, raise costs, or bring any number of other complications. However, there are rumors that Apple will release its first touch-screen MacBook later this year, so it’s not completely outlandish.

Of course, this is just a patent. Patent activity is no guarantee of future plans: sometimes projects are delayed or cancelled entirely, and it’s not unknown for companies to file patents to obstruct or mislead their rivals.

Still, it’s an interesting idea. Watch this space and we’ll let you know if anything comes of it.