Android may soon add support for digital smart lock keys

Smart locks are a fundamental component of modern homes. Smart locks can add many features to your smart home security. For example, you can set up temporary one-time entry codes for homeowners or maintenance personnel, set an auto-lock schedule to prevent your front door from being accidentally unlocked at night, or use a mobile app that locks when you approach your home. You can also unlock the door. .

Some smart locks have built-in video cameras and biometrics, but one feature we’d like to see more built-in is an NFC-based digital key. Using the same technology that lets you tap your phone to a registered device to make payments with digital wallets like Google/Apple/Samsung Pay, you can now unlock and lock your smart lock with just a touch of your smartphone. Become. Make your smartwatch more convenient when your hands are full.

Fortunately for smart homers using Android, a group effort by leading technology companies and smart lock manufacturers is underway to achieve a common standard for digital keys across all major smartphone/watch and smart lock brands. . Since 2021, companies like Apple, Google, and Samsung have been working on a standard called Aliro with major smart lock manufacturers like Yale and Schlage. This open standard for universal communication between mobile phones/wearables and smart access readers has been a theory for many years.

A recent Telegram post by AssembleDebug on the GApps Flags & Leaks channel suggests that Aliro’s launch may be on the horizon. this is. . .was backed up According to evidence discovered on AOSP by Android Police contributor Mishaal Rahman.

In a Feb. 6 X post on AssembleDebug, the leaker notes that the new Aliro service is part of the latest Google Play Services beta, and that the service is currently disabled, but that “work towards this standard This shows that it has started.” Host support for new open standards was also discovered in his AOSP, Android’s open source codebase.

Back in November, The Verge reported that any form of integration of the Alilo standard was at least a year and a half away. Although it’s easy to hope that AssembleDebug’s findings after only a few months indicate that a very early version of this service could be made available to non-beta users much sooner than that. , temper your enthusiasm. The Connectivity Standards Alliance, the organization responsible for developing the standard, told The Verge that it is not expected to be released earlier than the first quarter of 2025.

Using a universal digital key to unlock a smart lock is extremely useful in smart homes, but as The Verge points out, the possibilities go far beyond that. Eventually, these features will be widely implemented in gyms, offices, and hotel rooms. We hope that the popularity of this standard does not outweigh the corresponding security measures required.