Handing over your phone to a friend or acquaintance who "just needs to make a call" can be a little nerve-wracking, especially when you have some personal files or messages you don't want others to view. Perhaps you want to be sure that this person won't poke around in your personal files or secretly send your pictures to his/her smartphone, but you would feel better if you could be certain.
Android 5.0 Lollipop has just the feature to keep your phone secure in the hands of your friends: Screen Pinning. Now you can lock a single app into the foreground, and nobody will be able to sneak a peek at your web history.
To use it, you'll first have to open Settings > Security and enable Screen pinning at the bottom of the list. Activating it simply requires opening the Recents screen and tapping on the little push-pin button in the lower right corner of the front-most card. Once an app has been pinned, the Home and Recent navigation buttons will cease to function, and the back button will only function within the app. The icons on the status bar will also fade out, and the notification shade becomes inaccessible. Holding the Back and Recent buttons at the same time will escape from Pinned mode.
The good news is that even if the screen of the phone is turned off and on, the pinned apps won't be deactivated. it will remain active, so people won't have to constantly tap the screen to keep it alive. If you've enabled security of some kind (e.g.pin, pattern unlock), an option becomes available to have the lockscreen reactivated when a user tries to leave the app. Unfortunately, there's no way to return to the pinned app once the lockscreen comes on.
With the ability to lock the screen to a single app, you don't have to worry about people messing with your settings or digging around in your private stuff. This will also be a great way for parents to hand their phone over to a kid to play with. However, note that there is no way to block features inside of an app, so people can still wander through your contact list in the dialer or hit web history if you've pinned your browser. Still, this is far better than giving somebody total access to one of your most important tools.
Android 5.0 Lollipop has just the feature to keep your phone secure in the hands of your friends: Screen Pinning. Now you can lock a single app into the foreground, and nobody will be able to sneak a peek at your web history.
To use it, you'll first have to open Settings > Security and enable Screen pinning at the bottom of the list. Activating it simply requires opening the Recents screen and tapping on the little push-pin button in the lower right corner of the front-most card. Once an app has been pinned, the Home and Recent navigation buttons will cease to function, and the back button will only function within the app. The icons on the status bar will also fade out, and the notification shade becomes inaccessible. Holding the Back and Recent buttons at the same time will escape from Pinned mode.
The good news is that even if the screen of the phone is turned off and on, the pinned apps won't be deactivated. it will remain active, so people won't have to constantly tap the screen to keep it alive. If you've enabled security of some kind (e.g.pin, pattern unlock), an option becomes available to have the lockscreen reactivated when a user tries to leave the app. Unfortunately, there's no way to return to the pinned app once the lockscreen comes on.
With the ability to lock the screen to a single app, you don't have to worry about people messing with your settings or digging around in your private stuff. This will also be a great way for parents to hand their phone over to a kid to play with. However, note that there is no way to block features inside of an app, so people can still wander through your contact list in the dialer or hit web history if you've pinned your browser. Still, this is far better than giving somebody total access to one of your most important tools.
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