This is a step by step guide shows how to enable fingerprint reader support for Lenovo ThinkPad T480/T480s, X1 Carbon 6th gen, X1 Yoga 3rd gen, X280, etc with 06cb:009a device in Ubuntu 22.04.
Ubuntu has fingerprint reader support out-of-the-box using libfprint, and provides option to enable fingerprint login in Users settings page. However, the library has a list of unsupported devices, including 06cb:009a that’s built-in in my used ThinkPad T480s laptop.
Thankfully, there’s a free open-source alternative python-validity that works in my case. Here’s how to install and set it up in Ubuntu 22.04, while Ubuntu 20.04 is also supported.
NOTE: This tutorial may also work in many other fingerprint readers, however, the project so far does NOT provide a page to list all supported devices.
Step 1: Tell Which Fingerprint Reader device do your laptop have
First of all, you may press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open up a terminal window.
Then run command to find out the device name of your fingerprint reader:
