If your Orb is reporting failed verifications, or shows as Degraded in Your Orbs, the cause is usually the space around it rather than the device. This guide covers what to check, in the order worth checking it.

Power and network

• Confirm the Orb is powered on and its stand is stable.
• Confirm the Orb shows as online in Your Orbs, and that the network column shows a connection rather than Disconnected.
• If it is offline, check the network at your end before anything else. See Orb network requirements.
• If the Orb is powered off or unresponsive, see How to Power Your Orb.

Environment

Lighting

• Use soft, even, office-like lighting. Avoid anything that creates glare or deep shadows.
• Prefer warm-white lighting around 3500K.
• Avoid bright incandescent bulbs. They can interfere with the infrared sensors.
• If the space is dim, add soft, diffused fill light toward the employee's face.
• Avoid reflections or shiny highlights in the eyes.
• For a new location, check light levels with a light-meter app to make sure both eyes are evenly illuminated.
• Keep the Orb away from mirrors, reflective surfaces, LED walls and strong directional lighting, and avoid places where the light changes rapidly.

Orb placement

• Keep the Orb 3 or more meters away from windows, glass doors or skylights, to prevent direct sunlight or backlight.
• Align the stand along a wall to keep the background clean and free of distraction.
• Maintain a tidy area around the Orb to avoid occlusions.
• Position the Orb against a neutral background on a stable stand, slightly below the employee's eye level.

Examples

👍🏼 Good positioning: Orbs placed indoors, away from windows, with consistent lighting.

👎🏼 Poor positioning: outdoors, in front of direct sunlight or bright windows, under skylights, or in poorly lit areas.

Best Practices During Verifications

If the space is right and verifications are still failing, the cause is usually how the employee is standing. These are worth sharing with anyone about to verify.

Distance and framing

• Stand 20 to 40 cm from the Orb.
• Too close or too far can cause an out-of-focus capture.

Height and alignment

• Center your face and look into the mirror inside the lens.
• Adjust your posture rather than tilting or touching the Orb.

Head, gaze and stillness

• Keep your head straight, look directly at the Orb, and avoid blinking during the 3 to 5 second capture.
• Do not touch or move the Orb.

Obstructions

• Remove sunglasses, reflective eyewear, hats, masks and anything covering the eyes, including hair. Colored contact lenses and heavy reflective makeup such as glitter around the eyes can also prevent a capture.

Lighting

• Make sure light on the face is even and diffuse.
• Avoid backlight or bright patterns behind you.

Typical capture time

• With the right positioning and lighting, a capture completes in about 5 seconds.

Troubleshooting (Step-by-Step)

Follow these in order. Move to the next one only if the issue persists.

1. Quick triage

• Confirm the Orb is online in Your Orbs, and check its status and last seen time.
• Check the ring lights and any on-screen message to identify which stage is failing: QR, positioning, capture or network. See Understanding Your Orb's Lights and Audio Indicators.
• Check the verification history on the Orb's detail panel to see whether failures are recent or ongoing.

2. Environment checks

• Lighting: even, no glare, no backlight.
• Placement: clean, neutral background facing the employee.
• Network: stable and meeting the requirements in Orb network requirements. If you are running the Orb on a temporary hotspot, keep the hotspot within 1 to 1.5 meters of it.

3. Employee positioning

• Center the face and make sure both eyes are visible.
• Look at the Orb and remain still.
• Remove sunglasses, eyewear or hair blocking the eyes.

4. QR and pairing issues

• Confirm the employee is on the verification screen in the World ID App.
• Clean the Orb face and the phone screen, and increase phone brightness.
• If the phone still cannot connect, try a guest network if one is available.

5. Capture quality and outside view errors

• Fix harsh shadows or bright sources behind the employee.
• Follow the pre-flight prompts in the app.

6. Repeated failures for one person

• If one employee fails repeatedly while others succeed, the cause is specific to them rather than to the Orb. Ask them to stop retrying and use the support option on the failure screen in their app. Repeated attempts will not change the outcome.
• Two outcomes work this way. If the check cannot confirm a live person, retrying will not help. If the person has already verified before, the app will stop the session and direct them to in-app support.
• See also Why did my World ID verification fail?, which explains this from the employee's side.

7. Reset and re-test

• Power cycle the Orb.
• Wait for a stable network connection.
• Try again once the environment checks above are complete.
• Ask someone who has verified successfully before to try, so you can tell an environment problem from an individual one.

8. Before you contact us

If several employees fail in a row after those checks, these three things let us diagnose it without a site visit.

• Note the exact ring light pattern and the stage at which it stops.
• From about 2 meters away, record a short video showing the full sequence, lights and audio together.
• Have the Orb ID, and the time and location, to hand.

If your Orb uses a battery, a capacitor check is also useful:

1. Start the Orb and let it run for 3 minutes.
2. Once it is fully on, remove the battery.
3. Time how long the Orb takes to shut off.

If it shuts off immediately, the capacitors are not holding charge. Include that result when you contact us.

9. When to contact us immediately

• Systematic timeouts across multiple employees.
• Light patterns suggesting a hardware issue.
• Repeated pairing failures despite the correct app screen and clean optics.

Quick troubleshooting

The employee's QR code will not scan, or pairing fails

• Confirm they are on the verification screen in the World ID App.
• Clean the Orb surface and the phone camera.
• Recheck the network and retry.

Poor capture quality

• Reposition the employee.
• Adjust the lighting.
• Remove eyewear or anything blocking the eyes.
• Retry the capture.

Verifications stop working partway through the day

• Check whether the Orb has gone offline or entered an update. See Monitoring your Orb fleet.

Repeated failures for the same person

• Stop retrying.
• Direct them to the in-app support chat from the failure screen.

Translations may differ slightly from the original English content. For the most accurate information, please refer to the article's English version if any discrepancies occur.