Sometimes life puts us in all sort of ambiguous situation, when saying yes to something becomes as difficult as saying no. Here I am talking about the situation when your close friend asks your smartphone for either playing game or watching a movie. You do not want to hurt his feelings by saying no, and at the same time you cannot hand him your phone as there are some personal messages which you do not wish to share. So, what to do now in such a situation, confused, you need not to be as Android has an inbuilt security feature which restricts your phone to a single app.
The feature which provides you with the ability to restrict your phone to one particular app is known as Screen Pinning. This is an inbuilt security feature of Android which was introduced in Android 5.0
Also read: How to Use Guided Access Feature to Secure Your iPhone
What is Screen Pinning?
It is one of the inbuilt feature of Android which when enabled, can lock down your phone to one app, so the person using it cannot get the access to other apps of your mobile. For example, if your child wishes to view cartoon on YouTube than you can start the Youtube app and pin it, so that the access of your child remains limited to that single app.
How to Turn on Screen Pinning:
Turning on Screen Pinning is quite a simple process, and does not require any specific expertise.
1. Open Settings on your smartphone and tap on the Security option.
2. Now under the Advanced tab click on Screen pinning.
3. Now slide the button to the ON position, to turn on Screen Pinning.
4. Once you enable “Screen pinning” now set Ask for unlock pattern before unpinning to ON.
Here the option may change depending on the option you have set for unlocking your device. Since I have chosen the Pattern lock. This will provide you more security as one can only unpin the Tab by providing the Pin, pattern or password.
How to Pin a Screen or an App:
1. Open the screen you wish to pin. Now touch on overview and swipe up and click on the pin icon.
2. Once you’ve clicked on the pin icon you will receive a message confirming that the screen is pinned. Click on Got It.
How to Unpin the screen:
It is quite obvious that you do not wish to pin a screen or a tab forever. To unpin the screen, you just have to hold Back and Overview at the same time. However, in some smartphones long pressing the back button is all you need to unpin a tab. Since we have chosen to be asked for the PIN, pattern, or password before unpinning, we will need to enter it.
Undoubtedly it is one of the best feature of Android, which when enabled gives you complete peace of mind while giving your phone to friend or child. Moreover, this feature is super useful while playing games as many times it happened that we accidently touch the back button while we are in the middle of the game and force to lose it. So, folks if you still haven’t explored this great feature then experience it today.