When the first MacBook Pro with a Touch ID sensor was released, I was thoroughly excited. Rightly so. Apps like 1Password was quick to implement support for it. There was one thing that was missing though; authentication with sudo.
I’m almost ashamed that after having owned at least two MacBook Pros with Touch ID, I didn’t find out until today about this. So it’s time to write it down. Hat tip to Stanislas and his post “Using Touch ID for sudo authentication on a MacBook” for showing me the way.
Edit (as root) /etc/pam.d/sudo:
# sudo: auth account password session
auth sufficient pam_smartcard.so
auth sufficient pam_tid.so # <= Add this line!
auth required pam_opendirectory.so
account required pam_permit.so
password required pam_deny.so
session required pam_permit.so
For clarity, the line you want to add (as seen above) is:
auth sufficient pam_tid.so
That’s all you need! Oh, and your finger, of course! 😉