Letting your child play games on your iPhone, safely
A game is one swipe away from your photos, your messages and your card.
In short
Before handing your iPhone to a child, open the game and start Guided Access: it locks the phone to that one app, with an optional time limit, until you end it with a passcode or Face ID. To guard against accidental purchases, restrict in-app purchases in Screen Time. Lock any app you don’t want opened, and keep private photos out of the camera roll altogether.
Key takeaways
- Guided Access keeps the phone inside one app until you end it.
- Screen Time can block in-app purchases on your own iPhone.
- Locked apps need your Face ID or passcode to open.
What a child can stumble on
- The camera roll, one tap away from the Photos app or a game’s share button.
- Notifications from Messages or Mail sliding in over the game.
- In-app purchases charged to your payment method.
- Deleting photos by accident — with iCloud Photos on, a deletion syncs to all your devices.
Lock the phone to the game with Guided Access
- Turn it on once: Settings › Accessibility › Guided Access. In Passcode Settings, set a Guided Access passcode or allow Face ID to end a session.
- Open the game, then start Guided Access — with the Accessibility Shortcut, Control Center or by asking Siri.
- Optionally circle parts of the screen to disable, such as a store button.
- In Session Settings, choose whether the side button, volume buttons and keyboard work, and set a Time Limit if you want.
- Tap Start. To end it, triple-click the side button and enter the Guided Access passcode, or use Face ID if you allowed it.
Block in-app purchases
In Settings › Screen Time › Content & Privacy Restrictions, turn on restrictions, tap iTunes & App Store Purchases, and choose your settings for in-app purchases. These apply to your own use of the phone too, so many parents prefer Guided Access for short sessions and a separate device with a Child Account for regular play.
Keep notifications and other apps out of the way
- Turn on a Focus such as Do Not Disturb before handing the phone over, so notifications are held back.
- Lock apps you don’t want opened: touch and hold the app icon, then tap Require Face ID. A few built-in apps, such as Camera, Contacts and Settings, can’t be locked.
- In Photos, the Hidden and Recently Deleted albums are locked by default and open with Face ID or your passcode.
Photos that should never be a tap away
Guided Access and locked apps protect a session. For photos and documents that should never appear next to the family pictures, a vault keeps them out of the Photos app entirely. In Latent, they sit behind a pattern of their own, and the vault can lock itself again the moment you leave the app.