Not long ago, facial recognition technology seemed more like something out of a science fiction movie than technology you could use from your mobile device. But we’re now seeing a widening landscape of apps that employ facial recognition for a variety of use cases.
As this technology gains prevalence one thing is clear: facial recognition technology is having an impactful and positive effect on our society. The use cases are far reaching. Facial recognition apps are currently being used to safeguard personal information from cyber-attacks, minimize false arrests and even to help diagnose patients with genetic conditions.
How will facial recognition apps be used in the future? Only time will tell. In the meantime, here are the 19 best face recognition apps on mobile that are transform the world.
FaceFirst
Our own FaceFirst mobile face recognition app, popular with law enforcement and military, gives users the ability to take photographs of persons in the field and instantly match them against a database of known individuals. This can help quickly establish identity. As a result, law enforcement officers can keep their communities safer, while reducing false arrests. Officers can also enroll suspected criminals in their watchlist directly from the field.
Blippar is an augmented reality app that boasts a huge database of everyday objects and images that it can recognize. It claims to offer the ability to recognize plants, animals, landmarks and even your dinner. It also has a facial recognition component that enables it to recognize people.
Face2Gene is a potentially breakthrough healthcare app that uses facial recognition to help clinicians and bioinformatics to prioritize and determine certain disorders and variants for their patients. It works using a proprietary algorithm that compares individuals faces to those with syndromes that present a similar morphology. As a result, patients can possibly be diagnosed with genetic syndromes faster and more efficiently.
This cool app recognizes your emotion in a photo and automatically places fun emoticons in the right spots on your face, which you can share with your friends via Facebook Messenger. Upload a photo and EmoticonAR automatically relates an emoticon to every single person in the shot. It also offers several photo filters for further editing.
Cyber-attacks are unfortunately getting more prevalent. OneSpan was built to help safeguard devices against malware attacks using biometric authentication such as fingerprint and facial recognition.
Banks are using facial recognition more and more to help protect consumers and prevent fraud. Face Phi is a mobile app that is used from banks over the world in order to verify their clients when they are engaged in mobile banking. Clients simply snaps a picture of themselves with their smartphone, which can then be used as a means of identification, enabling access to the bank’s mobile app.
LogMe is a face search engine app based on similarity and distance. Simply upload a photo and this app uses face recognition to extract all of the faces in the photo, which it then compares to other photos uploaded by LogMe users. You can then browse similar faces based on the level of resemblance or the distance of the upload.
Instantly create your own funny cartoon stickers with MojiPop and add a pinch of humor to your chats. This app uses face recognition to create animated stickers using your face, for any emotion or situation. Simply upload a selfie and Mojipop will create several stickers that look just like you, which you can share directly from your keyboard!
Closely camera is a nanny cam app for iOS and Android that lets you stream video from one device to another. It offers a wide variety of features and alerts so you can ensure that your child (or even pet) is safe. The app also offers an optional facial tracking feature that helps you identify who you are monitoring.
BioID is a mobile face recognition app that acts as a bio authenticator. As password hacking continues to rise, this app removes the need for a password and instead uses biometrics to prove identity.
This is another case of a facial recognition app that’s being used for entertainment. With Sokrush’s face recognition app you can take pictures of an individual’s face and it can analyze their features to attempt to recognize what mood they are in.
Applock gives allows Android users the ability to lock and unlock apps and files using both face and voice recognition. AppLock ensures that only you can access your personal information, social media apps, and financial accounts, or make changes to the phone’s settings.
Railer is a mobile attendance app for small to large companies that allows employees to quickly check in and out of shifts using face recognition. Available in both iOS and Android.
Face Lock Screen is a free solution for Android that lets users unlock various apps using facial recognition.
Luxand offers a face recognition SDK and face detection APIs that offer all kinds of features for apps including transforming faces into 3-D avatars, predicting what children will look like and more.
With Vault, you never get caught off guard with sensitive material on your phone. This Android app allows you to hide and protect your private photos and videos in a private gallery, lock confidential applications and securely backup your data in the Cloud. You can also share private data among multiple devices. You can even unlock your vault using the app’s facial recognition component.
True Key by Intel Security uses biometrics such as your face or fingerprint to protect and access your passwords. The True Key app by Intel Security scrambles your passwords with AES-256, which is one of the strongest encryption algorithms available. Then, only you can decrypt and access your information with the factors you choose, including biometrics like face recognition and fingerprints.
The designers of this app claim that it offers better facial recognition than the Android’s native app for unlocking your screen.
Face Secret is a mobile app that analyzes a picture of your face to make predictions about you as a person, including your personality, age, ethnicity, and much more! Available for Android users.