Shoo! vs FaceGate: paid simplicity or free open source?

FaceGate is a free, open-source Mac app locker with Face ID, Touch ID and password unlock. It's the one comparison on this page where the honest answer might be "use the free one" — depending on what you actually value.

What each one actually is

FaceGate is a community-built, MIT-licensed app locker: free forever, source code public on GitHub, and it unlocks with your face (via the built-in camera), Touch ID, or a password stored in the Keychain. Shoo! is a paid, closed-source commercial product built around one authentication path — Touch ID or Apple Watch, with a private backup password as fallback — and nothing else.

Price: free is free

FaceGate costs nothing and always will — that's the whole point of it being open source. Shoo! is $17.99, one time. If budget is the deciding factor and you're comfortable with everything else about an open-source, community-maintained tool, FaceGate is a legitimate answer and we're not going to pretend otherwise.

Open source vs. commercial: a real trade-off, not a marketing line

Being open source means anyone can read FaceGate's code and verify what it actually does — a genuine trust advantage for people who want to check rather than take a company's word for it. The trade-off is what commercial software usually provides instead: a company with a support inbox, a license-recovery flow if you lose access, and a direct incentive to keep testing against new macOS releases because paying customers expect it to keep working. Neither model is strictly better; they suit different people.

Face ID needs a camera. Shoo! doesn't ask for one.

FaceGate's headline feature — unlocking with your face — needs camera access, plus local storage of encrypted face data. The project is upfront about the limits of this: its own documentation describes it as "a convenience layer against casual physical access," not protection against a determined attacker, since the built-in camera lacks depth sensing and a well-made deepfake video is an acknowledged blind spot. That's an honest disclosure worth respecting. Shoo! sidesteps the question entirely by not using the camera at all — Touch ID and Apple Watch are hardware-backed biometrics Apple already hardened, and the app requests zero permissions beyond that.

How the lock actually works: not publicly detailed either

FaceGate describes itself as intercepting app launches "in real-time," but doesn't spell out whether a locked app's process is terminated or merely blocked from finishing launch while continuing to run in the background. We won't guess at that here. What we can state plainly is how Shoo! works, because it's our own product: the app is force-terminated on launch or refocus and only restarts after successful authentication — there's no ambiguity about whether it's still running underneath.

Who FaceGate is better for

Someone who wants app-locking at zero cost, likes that the code is auditable, is comfortable self-supporting an open-source tool, and wants the option of face unlock even knowing its stated limits against sophisticated spoofing.

Who Shoo! is better for

Someone who wants a maintained commercial product with a real support channel and license recovery, would rather not grant camera access at all, and is fine paying once for that.

Frequently asked questions

Related reading