Guided Access Turns Your iPhone or iPad into a Sharable Single-App Tool

Most people seem happy to pass their phones around so dinner companions can look at pictures, for instance. However, many would not be comfortable lending their phone to someone for a lengthy period of time. Our iPhones are just too personal, and while iPads may not trigger quite such separation anxiety, you probably don’t want to let someone poke around in Messages, Mail, or Photos.

But there are situations where you want someone else to be able to use your iPhone or iPad for more than a few minutes, generally within only a single app. During that time, you don’t want the device to lock, so you don’t have to worry about sharing your passcode.

I recently encountered such a situation while “timing” an unusual Finger Lakes Runners Club race. For our Parallel of Latitude 8-Hour Endurance Run, we were concerned not with how fast anyone ran, but how many laps they completed within 8 hours. We used the UltraSignup app, which is designed for this task. It displays a grid of bib numbers on the screen, and each time a runner completes a lap, the timer taps their bib number to increment their lap count. One of our timers contributed an iPad Air with a Magic Keyboard, which displayed it at a convenient angle on the table.

Simple enough, but the iPad needed to be dedicated to the task for 8 hours, and multiple people had to be able to use it throughout the day at a moment’s notice. We didn’t want its screen to lock, nor did we want to have to share its passcode broadly. How could we achieve this and protect the owner’s privacy?

The answer is a little-known feature of iOS and iPadOS called Guided Access. It temporarily restricts the iPhone or iPad to a single app, which Apple promotes as letting a child use an app without worrying about what else they might get into. The iPadOS User Guide also suggests that it could help you stay focused on a task, and I could imagine it being beneficial for individuals with certain disabilities who experience unintended app switching. But what I find most interesting is how it can turn an iPhone or iPad into a single-purpose device for other people to use.

Apple’s instructions are accurate but worthless for giving you a sense of how to use the feature or answering your inevitable questions. If you want to try Guided Access, read on for my expanded version.

Set Up Guided Access

In a nod to its role in improving accessibility, Apple put Guided Access in Settings > Accessibility, under the General section. Once you turn on Guided Access, you can adjust the following settings:

• Passcode Settings: You can set a passcode that’s specific to Guided Access, which must be entered for it to be turned off. If you don’t do this, you’ll turn it off with your regular passcode. (If you set a Guided Access passcode, your regular passcode won’t work for turning it off.) The main utility here seems to be ensuring that the other users won’t see you type in your passcode.
• Time Limits: The controls here merely let you specify whether Guided Access will play a sound or speak up when 30 seconds are left before the session ends. You’ll set the actual time limit when you start the session.
• Accessibility Shortcut: You end a Guided Access session by triple-clicking the side or top button, but that’s also how you invoke the Accessibility Shortcut. (In Settings > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut, you can set a triple-click to offer a selection of accessibility settings.) Leave this switch off to avoid bringing up the Accessibility Shortcut options when you want to shut off Guided Access.
• Display Auto-Lock: I didn’t want the display to lock while we were timing the race because we had access to power to ensure the iPad didn’t run out. In other situations, you may wish to let the device turn off its screen to save battery, and you can do that in Display Auto-Lock. While in Guided Access, you can move past the Lock Screen without using Face ID or any passcode, so don’t be afraid to let the display sleep.

Start a Guided Access Session

After you’ve configured the Guided Access, follow these steps to start a session.

1. 1. Open the app you want to use.
   2. Triple-click the side or top button to turn on Guided Access. If you use it regularly, you can add a Guided Access button to Control Center and invoke it from there. Apple claims you can activate Guided Access with Siri, but Siri rejects that command in both iPadOS 17 and iOS 18.1.
   3. If you want to prevent access to a particular area of the screen, draw a circle around the spot. You can drag the mask around and use the handles to resize it. Frankly, this seems useful primarily to a parent trying to keep a kid out of certain parts of an app. I’d worry that it would block access to unintended parts of an app or be easily circumvented through other navigation controls.
   4. Tap the Options button in the lower-left corner to change these settings:
      • Side or Sleep/Wake Button: When enabled, this switch lets the user press the side or sleep/wake button to sleep and wake the screen, nothing more. If you’ve set Display Auto-Lock to Never, turn this switch off.
      • Volume Buttons: If you want to prevent the user from using these buttons to change the volume or trigger other actions (like taking a photo in the Camera app), turn off this switch.
      • Motion: This switch controls the device’s accelerometer sensor, so it probably needs to be on for games or apps that can flip from portrait to landscape. Conversely, turn it off to prevent an app from changing from the orientation it’s in when you start Guided Access.
      • Software Keyboards: I haven’t thought about alternative keyboards for years, but if you use any, I’d suggest that turning off this switch might be best. Software keyboards could confuse users or reveal information you would prefer not to share.
      • Touch: If you’re giving an iPad to a young child and want to prevent them from doing anything other than watching, turn off the Touch switch. I could also imagine a scenario where all input would occur via a keyboard, trackpad, or other input device.
      • Time Limit: Set how long the device should remain in Guided Access. If you set a sound or spoken warning, you’ll be alerted 30 seconds before, and when the time runs out, Guided Access puts up a Time Expired notice across the entire screen, prevents any other interaction with the app, and requires that you triple-click the side button to exit. It’s probably mostly useful for parents enforcing time limits on entertainment apps for young children.
   5. Tap Start in the upper-right corner.

For the remainder of the session, use the app as you wish. In my relatively limited experience, everything works as you’d expect, within the limitations you’ve set in the Guided Access options.

Guided Access blocks notifications, so you don’t have to worry about anyone using your iPhone or iPad reading your text messages or being confused by reminders or other alerts.

Adjust or End a Guided Access Session

As you figure out how you want to use Guided Access, you’ll probably want to adjust some of its options. Regardless, when you’re done with whatever app you’ve dedicated to it, you’ll want to end the session so you can return your iPhone or iPad to its regularly scheduled programming. Follow these steps:

1. Triple-click the side button and enter the necessary passcode to return to the Guided Access setup screen.
2. To adjust the settings, tap Options and make any desired changes. You can also add or remove areas of the screen you’ve blocked from accepting touch input. Tap Resume in the upper-right corner to continue the session.
3. To end the session, tap End in the upper-left corner.

Let me leave you with one final note. After you set up Guided Access in an app, it remembers how you’ve configured the options for future uses. On subsequent invocations of Guided Access for that app, it skips the setup screen that lets you block out areas of the screen and set options, instead triggering Guided Access immediately with your previous settings. If that’s not what you want, triple-click the side button to return to the setup screen, change the options, and tap Resume.

I’ve long known that Guided Access existed (though I recently had to remind myself that it wasn’t called Kiosk Mode). However, in previous cases where I’ve thought about using it, I was working quickly in stressful scenarios like race starts where I didn’t trust myself not to create a situation I’d later regret.

Now that I’ve thoroughly explored Guided Access and understand how it works, I anticipate using it more frequently. For instance, I might have a friend use my iPhone 16 Pro to take photos in Camera+ at a cross-country race to take advantage of its camera and action shot capabilities. Or I could imagine letting a young niece or nephew take pictures at a family gathering with an older iPhone or iPad to keep them entertained.

Can you think of ways to use Guided Access now that you know what it can do?