Unlocking your iPhone while wearing a face mask is difficult, but here's the 1 trick that made Apple's Face ID work for me

When holding the mask over one side of your face, make sure it's positioned on that half of your face as it would when you're wearing the mask fully.

Open your iPhone's settings menu, type in your passcode, and press "Set Up Face ID."

You may also want to try turning off the "Require Attention for Face ID" option. I found that this improved my chances of getting Face ID to work while wearing my mask.

Keep in mind, though, that disabling this setting will make Face ID slightly less secure, as it removes the layer of authentication that requires your eyes to be open and looking at the screen to unlock your phone. I'd recommend turning this back on when you're no longer wearing your mask.

Make sure your nose and mouth are visible on the uncovered portion of your face. My iPhone told me that my face was obstructed a couple of times during the setup process, but I was eventually able to complete my Face ID scan.

This is where things get a little tricky. I was able to unlock my iPhone on several occasions while wearing my face mask, but only when I held my phone at the angle shown above.

As you can see in the above image, my iPhone still unlocked even though I was wearing a mask that covered the lower portion of my face.

While the previously mentioned method worked for me on several occasions, that may not be the case for everyone. And even if it does work, you may not have the time or patience to position your face deliberately while at the grocery store or pharmacy.

Instead, you can try adjusting your notification settings to make sure incoming texts and other alerts are fully visible from the lock screen. This will prevent you from having to unlock your phone to read important notifications.

Select "Show Previews," and choose "Always." This will ensure that notification previews will always be shown on the lock screen, whether your phone is locked or unlocked.

You can always change this again later if you want to maintain more privacy.

After you enter your passcode, scroll down to the option called "Attention Awareness Features." You can turn this option off to prompt your iPhone to expand notifications on the lock screen even when your phone is locked.

This could make it easier to see incoming alerts at a glance while you're out without having to unlock your phone or touch its screen.

Again, if you're concerned about privacy, you can always turn this setting back on later.