iOS Guided Access Focuses Your Audience

One of the new features of Apple’s upgraded iOS is an Accessibility option that allows you to lock a device on a single app.  This can be advantageous when dealing with students who need to remain focused, letting your kids play with a device, or in a situation where you want to prevent people from wandering about your device.

To lock your device, you must first enable Guided Access through your settings.  To enable the feature go to: Settings >> General >> Accessibility >> Guided Access.  When you enable Guided Access, you will also set a password (similar to locking your device).

Once you have entered the application in which you would like to lock the device, simply triple click the home button.  This brings up the interface to lock into the app as well as the ability to lock certain portions of the screen.  Locking portions of the screen can be helpful if you want to disable certain options.  For example, if you want to lock someone in Safari on a web form and want to prevent them from accessing the URL, you can disable the upper portion of the screen.  In the image to the right, the lower portion of Sound Touch is blocked to prevent a child from viewing the other types of sounds.

Although it is a simple feature, you can leverage it to keep a child locked into a single application and away from the others on your device.  It can also be used if you are using a few iPads as part of a station during work in your classroom to help keep students on task while you are focused on other students in the class.  It certainly beats having to use physical blocks such as binder clips or credit cards in a case to prevent the use of the home button.

If you happen to lock yourself in Guided Access mode, you can hold power and the home button for 15 seconds to force reset your device.  This will enable you to go back into the settings and disable the feature or reset the password to something you’ll remember.