Gaze

Facial authentication for Linux.

Documentation · Install · Development

Gaze is a face authentication system for Linux. It runs entirely on-device with no cloud dependency, integrates with PAM for login and lock screen, and works with any standard webcam or Windows Hello-style infrared camera.

curl -fsSL https://gaze.gundulabs.com/install.sh | sh

The installer installs the GNOME Shell extension package and tries to enable lock screen face unlock for the current GNOME user. If you installed packages manually or automatic enablement was not possible, reboot (so GNOME Shell scans the new extension) and then run:

gnome-extensions enable gaze@gundulabs.com
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.gaze enable-face-authentication true

Running gnome-extensions enable before rebooting will return Extension "gaze@gundulabs.com" does not exist. Shell only rescans extension directories at session start.

sudo mkdir -p --mode=0755 /usr/share/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://packages.gundulabs.com/apt/gpg.key \
  | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/gundulabs-archive-keyring.gpg >/dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/gundulabs-archive-keyring.gpg] https://packages.gundulabs.com/apt/ * *" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gundulabs.list >/dev/null
sudo apt update
sudo apt install gaze gaze-gui gaze-gnome-extension

sudo rpm --import https://packages.gundulabs.com/yum/gpg.key
sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/gundulabs.repo >/dev/null <<EOF
[gundulabs]
name=Gundu Labs
baseurl=https://packages.gundulabs.com/yum/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://packages.gundulabs.com/yum/gpg.key
EOF
sudo dnf makecache
sudo dnf install gaze gaze-gui gaze-gnome-extension

# Requires an AUR helper such as yay or paru. yay shown here.
yay -S --needed gaze-bin gaze-gui-bin gaze-gnome-extension-bin

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists gundulabs https://packages.gundulabs.com/setup/flatpak/gundulabs.flatpakrepo
flatpak install gundulabs com.gundulabs.Gaze

After installation (any method), reboot once to ensure all system-level changes are fully applied.

sudo reboot

# Enroll your face
gaze add-face default

# Test authentication
gaze auth

# Or use the GUI
gaze-gui

Gaze runs a daemon (gazed) that communicates over DBus. When authentication is requested (by PAM at login, the GNOME extension on the lock screen, or the CLI), the daemon captures a frame from your webcam, detects and aligns the face, computes an embedding using an ONNX model, and compares it against stored enrollments.

All processing happens locally. Face embeddings are stored on disk, not transmitted anywhere.

Camera → Face Detection (SCRFD) → Alignment → Embedding (ArcFace) → Match → Liveness (MiniFASNet-V2)

# /etc/gaze/config.toml
[security]
level = "medium"    # low | medium | high | maximum | custom

[cameras]
rgb = "primary"
dark_luma_threshold = 70

[auth]
abort_if_ssh = true
abort_if_lid_closed = true

[enrollment]
max_templates = 2

[liveness]
enabled = true
threshold = 0.8

See the configuration guide for all options.

gaze add-face <name>         Enroll a new face
gaze refine-face <name>      Add samples to an existing enrollment
gaze auth                    Authenticate
gaze auth --verbose          Authenticate with detailed metrics
gaze list-faces              List enrolled faces
gaze rename-face <old> <new> Rename a face
gaze remove-face <name>      Remove a face
gaze clear-user              Remove all face data for current user
gaze config                  Interactive configuration editor
gaze config --show           Print current config and exit
gaze discover                List video devices and IR emitter support
gaze uninstall               Completely remove Gaze (packages, PAM, config, models, data)
gaze uninstall -y            Skip confirmation prompt

Dependencies: Rust 1.85+, just 1.51+, nfpm

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config clang libclang-dev \
  libopencv-dev libv4l-dev libpam0g-dev \
  libgtk-4-dev libadwaita-1-dev \
  libcairo2-dev libglib2.0-dev libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-dev libpango1.0-dev libgraphene-1.0-dev \
  libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev

# Build
just build-rust

# Package
just package <deb | rpm | archlinux>

See the development guide for more.

MIT