There’s a smart, safe way to keep your phone unlocked for convenience.

With all the hype around phone security this may sound a bit strange: you need to relax a bit. Not when you’re commuting by public transport or when you’re out on the town, but rather when you’re at home or at your office desk. Android phones are cleverly designed
to save you from having to continually unlock the phone when you’re in a safe space. This feature is called Smart Lock. Sometimes, when pairing a new Bluetooth device, you’ll be prompted to activate Smart Lock. Otherwise, you need to find it in your phone settings, usually under the Security settings. Smart Lock works in different ways:

Trusted devices
Every Bluetooth device connected to your phone can be Smart Lock-enabled. Under this setting, you’ll see a list of all the Bluetooth devices you have connected. Choose one or more of the devices, and add it to the Smart Lock list. This way, when you’re using your headphones, speaker or smartwatch, the phone knows that you are its legitimate user, and will keep itself unlocked. One of the most handy applications is activating Smart Lock when you’re connected to your car stereo. We don’t support you using your phone while driving, but in a world of rear-mounted fingerprint sensors, it is better to havethe phone unlocked in the car when you’re trying to use Google Maps, for example.

Voice Match
This is a way of speeding up your interactions with Google Assistant. Voice Match will use the ‘Okay, Google’ or ‘Hey Google’ catch phrase to wake the voice assistant and also simultaneously unlock the device. This can be especially useful for controlling your phone when driving. This option is only available if you have the Google Assistant app on your phone. When setting it up for the first time, you are prompted to train it to recognise your voice by repeating the phrase ‘Okay, Google’, several times. To make it work more reliably, you should repeat the phrase changing the pitch of your voice each time.