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I see a warning on my iPhone:

Face ID Has Been Disabled

A problem was detected with the TrueDepth camera. Face ID has been disabled.

In Settings.app on iPhone X. How do I fix it?

2 Answers 2

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Reboot or Force Reboot

Rebooting fixed it for me. If that doesn't work take the device to Apple.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208186

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A few drops of water fell on my iPhone 11 Pro Max when I used it next to the lake while still wet from swimming. Strangely, my waterproof phone in a protective case with a screen cover, albeit which doesn't cover the notch gave the warning:

A problem was detected with the TrueDepth camera. Face ID has been disabled.​

The Apple help documents linked in the iPhone go in circles, each one leading back to the other. Those documents talk about updating the OS, which I had just done a few days ago to 15.6.1 from 13.7.2. Strangely enough my iPhone 11 had been working under similar conditions with no issues on iOS 13.7.2. Restarting the phone did not help. Adding a new face in Face ID did not help. The Apple documents then recommend visiting a repair centre which didn't sound like much fun or really necessary.

What did work was removing Face ID completely and then restarting the phone in Airplane mode and re-adding Face ID.

Note that I did not have to erase and restore my iPhone (a significant waste of time and energy). Removing Face ID was enough.

I hope this info helps someone. I'd be interested to know if this remedy does work for others. If my own Face ID fails again (I've heard of such cases), I'll post and update. From here on, I will consider my iPhone 11 Pro Max to have no anti-splash properties as in the days of yore, as I'd like to get at least another couple of years out of it.

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