How to Passcode Lock an App on iPhone

[12vElectronics]

Lets say you're at a party and your phone is being used to play music from so others are using it to select music.. you might not want drunk people going through your photos looking at your dick pics

I mean that makes sense, but we can play the what if game all day long with 58385 scenarios. Other than photos, I don't see why you would need apps protected?

 

[jsmith189]

I mean that makes sense, but we can play the what if game all day long with 58385 scenarios. Other than photos, I don't see why you would need apps protected?

Photos aside... not wanting people to be able to access your Messages. Not wanting people to have access to your dating apps. Not wanting people to be able to post from your social media pages. Not wanting people to mess with HomeKit stuff (lights, locks, alarms, garage doors etc). Not wanting people to go through your browsing history. Extra protection for banking apps (most/all of which already have a layer of security, but another layer would be more comforting). Having extra security on private things if your phone was stolen unlocked. There are countless ways this would be useful for people.

I understand a phone lock would solve a lot of these, but that's not always possible - especially in the case of children using their parents' phone/s throughout the day. This seems like such a simple task for them, I don't understand why they wouldn't just make it an option.

 

[Thekevan]

Don't forget your Screen Time passcode, which is not the same as your Lock Screen passcode.

It's pretty hard to recover from a lost Screen Time passcode, so add it to your password manager. You DO have a password manager, right?

Until you can’t get into your password manager because it is locked under screen time and you can’t remember that password so you can’t get into your password manager to get the password because it is locked.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Why would you want your apps locked?

A friend or family member needs to use your phone, or a coworker sees your phone on your desk, and decides he or she wants to see what you have etc. There are lots of scenarios where locking apps is prudent.

 

[sterlingindigo]

What was the issue with your phone and why did they need it unlocked?

Last time I was at the genius bar, they just needed my MBP (mid 2010) logged in because their Diagnostics check wasn’t working. I was still with them while they worked on the issue.

I think it was screen replaced. Something about they couldn’t calibrate it with it locked.

 

[MadeTheSwitch]

Just a heads up: if you lock the Photos app without locking the camera app, that is still a way to reach your photos.

Well that blows this whole workaround then. Having to go through all those steps and put in a passcode each time you wanted to take a photo would not only be annoying, but in a lot of cases would cause you to miss whatever you were trying to take a photo of. Memories lost forever because Apple couldn’t do things right and a stupid workaround had to be used.

I really don’t understand Apple sometimes. You would think many of the problems and issues we experience here would be also experienced internally by staff within Apple, but yet these issues never get addressed. I don’t understand that.

I mean that makes sense, but we can play the what if game all day long with 58385 scenarios. Other than photos, I don't see why you would need apps protected?

Message apps, like kik for instance, would be another use case scenario.

 

[12vElectronics]

Well that blows this whole workaround then. Having to go through all those steps and put in a passcode each time you wanted to take a photo would not only be annoying, but in a lot of cases would cause you to miss whatever you were trying to take a photo of. Memories lost forever because Apple couldn’t do things right and a stupid workaround had to be used.

I really don’t understand Apple sometimes. You would think many of the problems and issues we experience here would be also experienced internally by staff within Apple, but yet these issues never get addressed. I don’t understand that.


Message apps, like kik for instance, would be another use case scenario.

People still use kik lol?

 

[Blackstick]

Good, I’ll use this next time I go to apple store and the employees ask me to unlock my device before working on my phone.

They’re seeing 4x the amount of customers their store was designed to handle. Nobody cares about your naughty photos or has an ounce of time to check. I worked in one such store 7 years, be more sure your data is backed up, because if calibration fails they’re going to try restore first and then replace your device entirely if it refuses to cooperate.

 

[n-evo]

Lets say you're at a party and your phone is being used to play music from so others are using it to select music.. you might not want drunk people going through your photos looking at your dick pics

Yeah, at a party people can ask me to change the song when my phone is being used. Nobody is getting the thing unlocked. It's just waiting for bad things to happen.

 

[OriginalClone]

The edit app option doesn’t show for me. I can only add by categories :/

 

[PD99]

Apple doesn't have an official method for individually locking sensitive apps like Photos with a passcode, but luckily there's a workaround that was introduced in iOS 12 with Screen Time.

If you really want to make sure one of your apps is inaccessible, you can use Apple's App Limits feature to do so. Here's how:

1. Open up the Settings app.
   
2. Choose "Screen Time."
   
3. Make sure Screen Time is enabled and a Screen Time passcode is set.
   
4. Tap on "Devices" in the upper left corner and select your current device. If you don't have multiple devices, just tap on the name of your device at the top.
   
5. Choose an app you want to lock and tap it. If the app you want isn't listed, choose any app. It's just a gateway to get to deeper settings.
   
   
   
6. Tap "Add Limit."
   
7. From here, tap "Edit Apps" and add all the other apps that you might want to lock. It gives you a full dropdown of all your apps.

After you've selected all of the apps that you want to be locked, use the timer interface at the top of the display to select a short period of time, like a minute, and then tap "Add."

The new App Limit will effectively lock up your selected apps, and if you attempt to tap on one of these locked apps, you will be required to input your Screen Time passcode.

How to Use a Locked App

Once you have App Limits in place to lock apps you want to be inaccessible, you can tap on "Ask for More Time" to access the app. You'll need to put in your passcode, and then once you do, you can unlock it for 15 minutes, an hour, or the rest of the day. There's no way to immediately lock it again after approving it for 15 minutes without redoing the entire App Limit setup, so keep that in mind.

Limitations

You can passcode lock any app on your phone except for the Phone app. There is no option to turn off access to the Phone app at all. For apps like Messages or FaceTime, you need to edit the "Always Allowed" section of Screen Time to remove them for the limit to be enabled.

You can disable access to Messages and FaceTime, but you might not want to. When access to Messages is disabled via App Limits, devices using iCloud for Screen Time are not able to send or receive messages during downtime. You're also not able to see notifications for apps that are locked, so keep that in mind when locking down social networking apps.

An Alternate Locking Method

If you want to lock up most or all of your apps, you can follow these steps:

1. Open the Settings app.
   
   Article Link: How to Passcode Lock an App in iOS

The first time you ask for more time, you can ask for 1 min more (if you have set time limit as 1 min) and it won’t ask you screen code. So it is a big hustle and still doesn’t do the job !!