Protecting Your iOS Device With Guided Access

If you need to hand your iPhone or iPad over to a child, consider using Guided Access to lock them into a single app and restrict what they can do. Guided Access allows you to turn off buttons and controls and even set time limits. You can regain access to your device with a password or Touch ID.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. On today's episode I'm going to show you how to use Guided Access in iOS to allow a child to safely play with your iPhone or iPad.
So let's say you want to handoff your iPad or iPhone to a child to use and you want them to stay in one app and not get in any trouble going to any of your other stuff or looking through email or browsing the web or anything like that. 
You can do that using Guided Access. For instance say I want to set a child to GarageBand using the keyboard here but I don't want them to be able to leave GarageBand. As a matter of fact I don't want them to be able to get into other sections of GarageBand either. Here's how you would do it.
First in the Settings app and under General go into Accessibility and under Accessibility you want to scroll down to Guided Access and go in there. Then switch on Guided Access. 
You've got some options in here. For instance you are going to be setting a passcode for Guided Access so you can get out of it. You can say Yes use Touch ID as a way to get out of it as well. You can also set time limits so you can give them the iPad and say you can do this for 30 minutes and then it's going to shut off. You can set options here of what sounds play when the time limit is reached.
You can try out these options as well as the last one here which brings up some shortcut settings when you triple click the Home button. But I'm just going to leave them all Off right now. I just turned it on at the top and that's all I need to do. Now let's go back.
So you want to go into the App and actually into the screen of what you're doing. Say you want to play a video. You might actually start the video playing at this point. Now you want to triple click the Home button. So I'm going to hit it quickly three times and that brings up Guided Access.
At the bottom of the screen I have options. I can tap on the Hardware Button options and I can define which buttons I want them to be able to use. So maybe I don't want them to be able to change the volume or maybe I do. So I can set those here.
On the right I can set the Time Limit. So I can say hey you can only use the iPad for 30 minutes and then it is going to shut off. Then I don't have to worry about keeping track of the time. The iPad will shut off by itself.
You can even shut off Touch completely which say if playing a video you may actually want to do. So they can't actually use the screen at all.
Now you see these little areas here. You can actually define these areas. I had some predefined from before but now you can draw them with your finger. So I want to turn off all the buttons at the top of this screen by dragging a circle around them. Maybe I even want to turn off some of this stuff down here so they can't get into trouble with that. You can drag these little dots to define the area. Now all they can do is change the instrument and use the keys on the keyboard.
You can define that anyway you want. Maybe you just want to block off the stuff at the top of the screen like that. 
Now as soon as I say Start, which is at the upper right, I'm asked to enter in a code and now it has started. Now that stuff at the top is turned off. They can use the keys at the bottom. In order to get out of it all that's needed is to triple click the Home button and it asks for the code. Then they come out of the here and I can either Resume at the top right or I can End.
If I were to End and you know playing a video maybe I started another video, I can triple click and it would automatically start again. It's not going to ask for a passcode this time because I already did it before. So triple click to get out of it and End it and now I'm back into normal mode.
So that's how you can secure your iPad and lock a child into a single app or even certain functionality within a single app using Guided Access.

Comments: 5 Responses to “Protecting Your iOS Device With Guided Access”

Terry Haddow

8 years ago

Gary - are you able to set guided access to 2 apps ?

Gary Rosenzweig

Terry: No. The whole idea is to keep it locked into one. I guess they could offer that as an option, but Apple likes to keep things simple and not confuse users with tons of options when it comes to things like this.

Thanks. Very clear and very useful for an educator.

Joe

Triple click the home button? Where is that?

Joe: The Home button is the physical button at the bottom of the screen of every iPad and iPhone.

Comments Closed.

Protecting Your iOS Device With Guided Access

Comments: 5 Responses to “Protecting Your iOS Device With Guided Access”

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