Fisher-Price. VTech. Duplo. Melissa and Doug. LeapFrog. Mattel. So many amazing baby toy brands out there! Do you know what brand my daughter loves most?
Apple.
iPhones, iPads, Macbook – if it’s got the Apple logo, if it’s expensive and if it’s mine, she loves it.
And, I, like many of the other mums out there, freely let her play with my devices because A) I’m lazy B)Â I can’t be bothered to take it off her and C)Â It keeps her quiet.
iPhone toddler trick is a must-try
The problem with letting out kids play with our devices is that they press buttons. They unlock stuff, they delete stuff, they move apps around and call random numbers and possibly lock you out of your phone for 44 years.Â
Well, not anymore, thanks to this ingenious trick a mum recently discovered and thankfully, shared on Facebook.
Get excited cause it’s a goodie! And it’s not just me who thinks so – the post has racked up 130,000 shares and rightfully so.
So, turns out, you can LOCK your iPhone so that your toddler can’t do any of those things when she’s playing with your phone. It’s called Guided Access and it’s only a click away.
How toddler lock aka Guided Access works
Guided Access keeps the iPhone in a single app and allows you to control which features are available. It also works on iPads.Â
To start Guided Access, you can go into Settings and turn it on through there. You will need to go into Settings, then General, then Accessibility, then scroll right down to Guided Access.
Or you can Triple-Click the Home Button in any app you want to get it working.
So, for example, you’ve got an episode of Bluey up on YouTube, ready to entertain your toddler while you chill the eff out for 7 minutes. Simply triple-click the home screen and viola – Bluey stays put, even when your toddler starts smacking at the buttons or licking the screen.
MUMS. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?
It means we can hand over our iPhone to our toddlers without fear they are going to delete anything. Or take 65 billion photos of their noses. Or randomly Facetime our bosses.
We can put a kids’ program on for them to watch and they can’t pause it or press on another video, resulting in us having to reload the damned episode again. Or sit through another 30 seconds of ads just to get the episode back.
Guided Access doesn’t prevent them from carrying the phone around, burying it in a bucket of toys or dropping it on the tiles and breaking the screen, but, hey, at least it’s a start.
Guided Access, welcome to my life. I don’t know how I went for so long without you.
