How to Use the iPhone Guided Access App

Guided Access allows you to set time limits for your child’s screen time.

Do you ever let your young child play on your phone? Are you afraid they might someday delete photos, call your clients or even send nonsensical Tweets to hundreds of people? It happens all the time—but when a toddler is in the middle of a breakdown while you’re waiting for a table at your favorite restaurant, those concerns often give way under the more urgent need to offer him or her a much-needed distraction. So you hand it over and hope for the best.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The iPhone comes with creative protections to let even young kids play on your phone with relative safety.

Let us introduce you to the iPhone Guided Access feature—it allows you to restrict your child to a specific app, block certain buttons that appear within the app and even set helpful time limits.

What is Access?

Guided Access keeps your phone locked into a single app for as long as you want.

• Guided Access keeps your phone locked into a single app for as long as you want it to be; only an adult who knows the access code can unlock it
• Guided Access also allows you to disable unwanted features within a given app

How do you use Guided Access?

Guided Access is easy to find and enable.

• This feature is easy to find and enable: Just go to Settings, then General, and finally Accessibility. You’ll find “Guided Access” at the bottom. Switch it to “On,” create a four-digit passcode, and you’re ready to go
• Open the app your child is going to use, and then lock the phone into that app by simply pressing the home button three times. Now you’re in Guided Access mode
• To disable buttons within the app, just use your finger to circle the areas on the screen you want to disable

How does Guided Access help your family?

• There are great apps available for kids of all ages, but children by nature are curious. Many will navigate away from the app you intended for them in no time to see what can be done with all those other fancy buttons. This feature solves that problem
• Meanwhile, the ability to disable buttons makes a range of apps more child-friendly. If you want your child to FaceTime with an out-of-town relative, for instance, you can disable the mute, reverse-camera or end-call buttons and prevent them from sabotaging the call by accident

What are the other benefits of Guided Access?

• You can also set time limits for your child’s screen time. A sound will play indicating that time is almost up, and a voice will announce exactly how much time is left