Your Android Phone Has a Built-in Child Lock Function
Have you ever had to give your phone to a child? Even if you don’t want to , sometimes you try to calm them down in a restaurant or calm them down at the doctor. But handing over an unlocked phone is just asking your child to remove all shortcuts from your home screen (or worse, work emails). Fortunately, there is a way to fix this.
This feature is called screen pinning and is hidden in the Android settings menu with Lollipop. (See the “Fingerprints and Security” section.) Turn it on so you can “pin” an individual app to the screen whenever you want.
Here’s how you use it: Little Madison wants to see herself in all of Snapchat’s filters, so you open Snapchat and then click the little square button that shows all of your open apps. In the bottom corner of each app, there is an icon with a small button or a down arrow. Click to pin Snapchat to screen.
While the screen is locked, the child cannot exit the application using the usual Back, Home or Browse buttons. (This is the name of the square button.) This feature is also useful if you want to leave a specific screen open but are worried about accidentally pressing a button.
How to unpin the screen depends on your device. I have a phone that wants me to hold the Back button and another one wants me to hold the Back and Browse buttons together. Once your child is old enough to grasp this (or worse, read the little message that appears when they try to press the Home button), they can unpin the screen. But that just takes you back to the lock screen, so if they don’t know how to unlock your phone, all they can do is cry and return the phone. Hey, this is better than deleting mail.
Pinning the screen is also handy if you need to hand over your phone to a nosy colleague or cashier who needs to scan a coupon on your phone. One word of warning: if you use Smart Lock to unlock your phone when you are at home or within range of a specific Bluetooth device, then once the screen is turned off, the person can access whatever they want.