While playing a YouTube short (Blues Clues) on my iPhone, I closed my eyes and after approximately 30 seconds my phone locked. However, the video plays to the end while my eyes are open…
•I have tested this with multiple “shorts” (children’s videos like Blues Clues and Miss Rachel, as well as music videos, podcasts, etc) and the same thing happens - once my eyes are closed, my phone locks 30 seconds later.
•I also tried covering the camera with my hand and this locks my phone after 30 seconds as well.
•This does NOT happen with regular videos (meaning not “shorts”) on YouTube.
•I have the camera settings off, etc.
•This happens on multiple Apple devices (my current iPhone on iOS 17.1.1, an older iPhone, my Mac laptop, my iPad), as well as different browsers (Safari, Duck Duck Go, etc).
What the heck?? How and why does my iPhone or YouTube know this?? Is Apple or YouTube spying on me thru my camera?? How could this be possible??
**edited for formatting
For the iPhone, it uses the true depth camera to detect eye contact and therefore not dim/shut off the screen. It’s not a camera in the sense that you might think of a camera though, it’s infrared lasers. YouTube isn’t spying on you.
It’s a feature that you can turn off. It’s called Attention Awareness
Under settings/Face ID and passcode, toggle off attention aware features.
