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Keeping your data secure on a smartphone or tablet requires looking out for such threats as malicious messages, hostile websites… and your child.
While kids may not know how to run unauthorized code with system privileges, they do know how to ask for screen time on their parents’ mobile devices.
In that case, you’d want your gadget’s software to ensure that accidental or intentional taps and swipes by kids don’t expose your apps and information. But Apple’s (AAPL) iOS has provided embarrassingly little help with that over 12 versions — with iOS 13, and Apple’s new iPadOS, about to ship and suffer from the same flaw.
Screen Time is a joke
Here’s what I want: Before handing over my iPad to my daughter, I want to set it so only approved apps run and everything else is suppressed—including their notifications, so my kid doesn’t have to see people yelling at me on Twitter.
(I would also rather not have to see people yelling at me on Twitter, but we all know that’s not going to happen.)
Here’s what Apple offers: Screen Time, a bundle of options added in 2018’s iOS 12 to help you limit your own use but not that of a guest.
Christine Elgersma, senior editor of parent education at the San Francisco-based nonprofit Common Sense Media, summed up the two core issues with Screen Time: “A parent has to know about it, and it's not very intuitive.”
To use the feature, open the Settings app and choose Screen Time.
• To block Apple’s own apps, tap “Content & Privacy Restrictions,” tap “Allowed Apps,” then tap the green slider control next to each app to hide them from the screen. Their icons will vanish; note that unblocking them may not put those icons back where they were, wrecking your careful home-screen arrangement.
• You can’t block third-party apps, but can limit them to one minute of use per day. To do that, open the main Screen Time preferences, tap “App Limits,” choose individual apps or such app categories as “Social Networking,” and set them to be available only one minute daily — the minimum increment. This will also hide their notifications.
• To stop a kid from undoing each setting, add a Screen Time passcode that’s separate from your device’s regular unlock code; no, you can’t use Touch ID or Face ID for that.
If, however, you only want to limit your iPad to a single app, you should ignore Screen Time. Instead, use the Guided Access accessibility feature — the one you’ve probably invoked accidentally by triple-tapping the home button.
Competitors have gotten this right
The underlying problem is that iOS still functions as a single-user system — the human who sets it up is the only one who will use the device until it’s reset. So to set up an iPad properly for a kid, you basically need to buy an iPad for a kid.