How to Lock Down Your iPhone or iPad For Chidren

Has your child been in the middle of a game, only to touch the home button then get back to the home screen and suddenly all your apps are bouncing and ready to be deleted? Guided access is a great fix for that and can be accessed through the general settings.

Guided Access

Guided Access allows you to lock your device to a single app. For example, you could lock your device to only run a specific educational app or game and then hand it to your kid. They’d only be able to use that specific app. 

When they’re done, you can unlock the device with a PIN you set, allowing you to use it normally.

How to:

Go to Settings on your iPhone or iPAD and navigate to General > Accessibility > Guided Access. From here, you can ensure guided access is enabled and set a passcode

Once that is on go back to the Accessibility screen by tapping Accessibility at the top-left corner of the screen.

Make sure Guided Access is selected for Triple-click the home Button.

Now that guided access is enabled.  open the app you want to lock the device to — for example, whatever educational app or game you want your kid to use. Quickly press the Home button three times and the Guided Access screen will appear. From here, you can further lock down the app. For example, you could disable touch events completely, disable touch in certain areas of the app, disable motion, or disable hardware buttons.

You don’t have to configure any of these settings, however. To start a Guided Access session, just tap the Start option at the top-right corner of the screen.

If you try to tap the Home button to leave the app, you’ll see a “Guided Access is enabled” message at the top of the screen. Press the Home button three times again and you’ll see a PIN prompt. Enter the PIN you provided earlier to leave Guided Access mode.

Now whenever you want to enable Guided Access, just open the app you want to lock the device to and “triple-click” the Home button. 

I hope you can get as much use out of this feature as i have!

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