Your guide to Guided Access: iPhones and iPads

This is the first of many, many articles I want to share with you all. This subject is so heavy on my heart as I watch how technology is affecting all of us. I am so guilty of not restricting screen time enough, but one thing I do is restrict access. My kids are still fairly young so I don’t have to do a lot, but the day is coming when I have to turn them loose into the world and pray they remember what we’ve taught them. I don’t want to shelter my kids forever. They are young, so I do keep them from things their little eyes and ears don’t need to hear and see. I want to teach them how to make good decisions when its time.

Guiding and guarding our little ones through technology is a shifting problem for us all. It changes every day with new products and again as our kids get more independent. They will need/want to use technology more and more on their own. My oldest is 6, so this is the start for us. As we progress through this journey I will post and review helpful solutions for different age groups, because what works in our house may not be necessary in yours. We primarily use Apple phones/tablets and Windows computers.

Let’s start with the littlest ones. The most helpful guard I’ve found when my little ones pretty much ever touch my phone is Guided Access. I can’t count the number of times our kids have deleted an app or turned on some crazy feature I didn’t even know my phone had. And good luck getting it turned back off. Thankfully there’s Google for those rare questions! Ha-ha. Here’s how to turn on guided access on an iPhone or iPad.

Set up Guided Access

1. Go to your phones Settings-> General

2. Then into Accessibility

3. Scroll all the way down to Guided Access

4. In here you can turn on Guided Access,

set up a passcode (for disabling/editing GA after it’s started),

turn on touch ID and

set time limits (if desired)

Once you have set all this up in your settings it time to try it out!

Start a Guided Access Session

Go into any app and triple click the home button.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             This starts Guided Access (GA).

It will give you the opportunity to set up a few things. You can disable certain parts of the screen so it won’t register being touched.

This brings up a slightly opaque area that shows where you’ve circled and will not register touch. You can also choose which buttons and shortcuts you want access to while in GA (under Options in the bottom left corner). You can set up the specific time limit here too.  I usually like to lock the volume button and restrict a few screen areas. Or you could always turn touch off all together. This will be specific to that app only.  You will need to set this up with each app when you use GA for the first time in that app. Once you’ve got it like you want it, touch “start” and away you go.    

This is what the app will look like as its being used.

End a Guided Access Session

To turn GA off by triple clicking the home button and enter your passcode you set up or use the touch ID. That will take you back and you can either edit your restrictions or end GA. That’s about it. This has totally saved my bacon when I needed to let my kids safely watch a TV show in the doctor’s office so I could talk to the nurse. How do you use GA?