Touted by Apple as a feature to help you stay on task when using your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, Guided Access on iOS can be a useful feature in more practical situations as well.

Why use Guided Access on your iPhone, iPad?

With Guided Access, you can restrict your device to a single app, disable specific areas of the screen, and disable hardware buttons like the Sleep/Wake button or volume control.

For example, if your child is watching a movie on your iPad, you may want to prevent them from turning up the volume to full blast, stop them from leaving the app and getting distracted or access other apps like your email or text messages.

Or, stop people from swiping and looking at your (private) photos when you want to show them a specific photo. Disabling a part of the screen is handy when letting someone use your iPhone to make a call — in the Phone app, you can disable access to your Contacts, Recents, Favorites, and Voicemail and leave only the dialer accessible.

How to set up Guided Access

Guided Access is not enabled by default. To enable Guided Access, go to Settings > General > Accessibility > scroll down and tap Guided Access (under Learning). Now you have options to turn Guided Access on (or come back and turn it off), set a passcode to activate and deactivate Guided Access sessions, and set whether your device can go to sleep during a Guided Access session.

If you use Touch ID on your iPhone, you can also use it to end a Guided Access session instead of typing in a passcode. To enable it, go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Guided Access > Passcode Settings and turn on Touch ID.

How to start a Guided Access session

To start a Guided Access session, open the app you want to use, triple-click the Home button, and tap Start.

Now whoever you hand your iPhone to will only be able to use the app you picked and your iPhone also won’t display any notifications while the session is active.

How to end a Guided Access session

When you get your phone back, simply triple-click the Home button and enter the passcode you set during setup.

If you set up Guide Access to use Touch ID in the step above, simply press the Home button once and leave your finger on the Touch ID sensor until your iPhone recognizes your fingerprint and automatically disables Guide Access.

Control apps, disable parts of the screen with Guided Access options

Guided Access can turn off app controls, parts of the screen (like the bar at the bottom of the Phone app), and more.

Open the app you want to restrict, triple-tap the Home button to turn on Guided Access, tap Options (bottom left corner). From here you can: disable the Sleep/Wake button and Volume buttons; disable Motion; disable Keyboards; disable Touch completely, and set a time limit.

You can also disable parts of the screen by simply circling a part of the screen with your finger or set an area using the onscreen handles to drag the area where you want it and resize it. 

Sources: iGeeksBlog; How-to-Geek; Apple

Image credit: janeb13, Pixabay