This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/surface by /u/Alex_Ludens on 2025-07-10 22:18:09+00:00.
I’ve been a long-time Microsoft Surface user — Pro 5, Pro 7, Surface Book, and Surface Laptop — using both Windows 10 and 11.
A few weeks ago, Windows Hello Face ID just stopped working in low light. I assumed something broke: spent hours reinstalling drivers, resetting biometric settings, disabling devices, reading forum threads.
Turns out, Microsoft **silently changed the Hello policy**: it now requires both infrared and RGB camera input — meaning Face ID won't work in the dark anymore. This is apparently a "security improvement."
But here’s the real issue: **there was no warning.** No system alert, no changelog entry, nothing. Just broken functionality and confused users wasting time troubleshooting what isn’t a bug — but a deliberate, undocumented change.
This is a massive UX failure. It's not about the policy itself — it's about *respecting your users' time* and *communicating changes that break expected behavior*.
If anyone at Microsoft is reading: someone should be held accountable for this communication failure. A pop-up would’ve saved countless hours for so many users. We deserve better.
Here’s a Tom's Hardware article covering it:
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/microsoft-has-broken-windows-hello-facial-recognition-it-no-longer-works-in-the-dark
And several threads from Reddit: