Lock Your Phone To A Single App With Lollipop Screen Pinning

Lock Your Phone to a Single App with Lollipop Screen Pinning

BY GreenBot Staff

GreenBot Staff

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All Articles by GreenBot Staff

Published 5 May 2015

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Here’s the scenario. You hand your phone to your three-year-old to keep them amused in the car’s back seat. Then you get your phone back 20 minutes later. Only to realize that your kid has deleted half your apps, texted your ex from college. And written the Great American Novel. Not good. Except for that last part. That’s pretty cool. You have an intelligent kid. But you could have averted this digital disaster if you used Android 5.0 Lollipop’s screen pinning feature. This new addition makes it more challenging to switch from one app to another. And accidentally wreak havoc on someone else’s phone. Here’s how to set it up. Open the Settings app, tap Security, then tap Screen pinning. It’s located under the Advanced heading. Next, toggle the screen, pinning the toggle to the on position.

pinned 1 — Turning on screen pinning is just a few taps away.

To use screen pinning, tap the Overview button, the square button in the lower right corner of your screen. And swipe up and down until you find the app you want to pin. Once you find the app you want to pin, tap the pin button. It’s a blue-green button with a white pushpin.

pinned 2 — Tap the pushpin icon to pin that app to your screen.

When you’re ready to turn off screen pinning and move on to another app. Hold down the Back button triangle and the Overview button simultaneously for a second or two. Until your phone tells you it has unpinned the screen in question. You can even require your security pin or password if you like. So now you can hand your phone over to your kid with less anxiety.