Use facial gestures & head movements to control your Chromebook with Face control

Important:

• The camera should work at all times while you use Face control.
  • Make sure the camera shutter or cover on your Chromebook is open.
  • To ensure accuracy, keep the camera on while you use Face control.
  • To ensure proper functionality of Face control, make sure the camera isn’t blocked and works correctly.
  • To accurately detect facial gestures and head movements, make sure your workspace has adequate lighting.
  • Face control respects camera policies.
• When you first turn on Face control, a confirmation dialog appears.
  • If you cancel, Face control won’t turn on.
  • If you confirm, Face control is turned on and the downloadable content that contains the machine learning model needed to run Face control starts to download.
  • If the download fails, Face control is turned off and a notification appears.
  • If the download succeeds, a notification appears and Face control starts with the default settings.
  • No personal data is collected by the model or the Face control feature.
• You can use head movements to control the cursor and can also assign facial gestures to actions on your Chromebook.
• To improve your overall hands-free experience on your Chromebook, this feature works well with:
  • Dictation
  • Automatic clicks
  • Sticky keys
  • Switch Access
  • On-screen keyboard

What you need

To use Face control, your Chromebook needs to have a version of M132 or higher.

• Webcam access: The system needs permission to access your Chromebook’s webcam to capture facial data.
• First time confirmation dialog: A dialog box should appear to get your consent.
• Internet Access: A stable internet connection is required to download the necessary machine learning model. A notification in the notification center confirms the successful download.

Tips:

• You can use Face control as a guest. This allows access without saving your preferences, such as cursor speed.
• You can adjust Face control options through Quick settings. Learn how to turn on Chromebook accessibility features.

Set up Face control

1. On your computer, at the bottom right, select the time.
   • Or, you can press Alt + Shift + s.
2. Select Settings Accessibility Cursor and touchpad.
3. To navigate to the Face control settings subpage, select Face control.
4. Turn on Face control.

Turn on cursor control

Important: By default, Cursor control is turned on.

Use head movements to control the mouse cursor. This hands-free approach helps users with limited mobility or repetitive strain injuries navigate and interact with digital content seamlessly.

1. On your computer, at the bottom right, select the time.
   • Or, you can press Alt + Shift + s.
2. Select Settings Accessibility Cursor and touchpad.
3. Select Face control.
4. Turn on Face control.
5. On the “Cursor settings” card, turn on Use head movements to control the mouse cursor.
   • This is on by default.

Customize cursor control settings

You can adjust the cursor speed, stability, and acceleration.

Adjust cursor speed

1. On the “Cursor settings” card, turn on Use head movements to control the mouse cursor.
2. Select Face control Cursor Speed.
3. Next to “Cursor speed,” drag the slider right or left, from “Slow” to “Fast.”

Tips:

• Cursor direction speed: To adjust the cursor speed in each direction, turn on Adjust speed separately for each direction. You can adjust the “Up,” “Down,” “Left,” and “Right” directions from “Slow” to “Fast.”
• Cursor stability: You can keep the cursor stable even if you have slight head movements. This requires more effort to move the cursor. To adjust cursor stability, next to “Cursor stability,” drag the slider left or right, from “Responsive” to “Stable.”
• Cursor acceleration: You can fling your head quickly in a direction to move the cursor further without moving your head excessively by adjusting the acceleration setting. This allows a greater range of cursor movement with less physical head movement. Turn on Cursor acceleration.
• Reset to default setting: To reset all cursor settings to their defaults, in the “Cursor settings” card, select Reset.

Assign face gestures for Face control

When you log in to your Chromebook, two gestures are mapped to actions by default:

• Smile is mapped to Left-click.
• Open your mouth wide is mapped to Scroll.

Toggle-type actions

Some of the Face control actions require you to toggle into an action mode by performing the assigned facial gesture. You can interact with the computer as needed, then perform the assigned facial gesture again to toggle out of the action mode. When you’re in an action mode, all other facial gestures are ignored until you exit the action mode to avoid accidentally triggering other actions.

Drag & drop

You can use drag and drop to perform the same function as when you click and hold down the left mouse button. This is the same as when you move your desktop windows or highlight text.

To use drag and drop:

1. Perform the facial gesture to pick up the item.
   • At the top of the screen, the “Face control indicator” indicates that your device is in the process of a drag and drop
2. Move your cursor to the desired location either through Face control or other input system like your mouse or touchpad.
3. Perform the facial gesture to drop the item.

Start or stop dictation

To input text into text fields with your voice, you can use dictation.

To use dictation:

1. Click on a text field.
2. Perform the assigned facial gesture.
   • A bubble will appear that indicates that dictation is on and waiting for input.
3. Speak your desired text input.
4. Perform the facial gesture again to stop.

Scroll mode

To scroll on webpages and desktop applications, you can use scroll mode.

To use scroll mode:

1. Hover the mouse over the content you want to scroll.
2. Perform the assigned facial gesture to enter scroll mode.
   • At the top of the screen, the “Face control indicator” indicates that your device is in scroll mode.
3. To scroll in your desired direction, tilt your head up and down, and left and right.
4. To exit the scroll mode, perform the facial gesture again.

Pause or resume Face control

You can pause Face control to freely move your face without triggering actions:

1. Perform the assigned facial gesture.
   • At the top of the screen, the “Face control indicator” indicates that Face control is paused.
2. To resume Face control, perform the facial gesture again.

Set custom key combination

Edit face gesture sensitivities for Face control

To update the gesture sensitivity after saving the action or gesture mapping:

1. In the Actions card, select the chip for the gesture that you have set. A dialog will appear for you to change the gesture sensitivity.
   • To increase or decrease the sensitivity, drag the sensitivity slider left or right.
   • If you decrease the threshold, you can use a subtle movement.
2. If you increase the threshold, you need a more exaggerated movement.
3. To update the gesture sensitivity, select Save.

Related resources

• Type text with your voice
• Automatically click objects on your Chromebook
• Sticky keys
• Use Switch Access
• Use the On-screen keyboard