A new little project from me: Dashboard Touch, which lets you make a Touch ID-style sensor for your Mac using off-the-shelf parts, so you don’t need an Apple Keyboard. By emulating keyboarding typing in your password, it works anywhere that macOS asks for authentication. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zXN-JzjkgY
The project is a refactor of tinyTouch from Zimeng Xiong, which you should also definitely check out. He came up with the broad approach: https://tinytouch.dev/ I wanted to add a friendly web interface for configuring things, as well as a more opinionated approach to authentication, so that it’s more straightforward for less expert users. But both approaches work with commodity hardware that you can buy online for $30-40.
In my project page here, you can sort of get a feel for the web UI; the circular “sensor” at the top emulates what happens when your fingerprint swipes the hardware sensor device. You can also see the wiring diagram you’ll need to follow if you want to solder the thing together yourself. (It’s not too bad.) https://anildash.com/projects/dashboard-touch/