How to keep a kid in an Android app

You’ve got a toddler or baby and want to keep them confined in one application / don’t want them sending garbage text messages and deleting people from your contacts. We’ve touched on Baby UnTouch before, and how to use Guided Assistance on iOS, but Android L is now rolling out to tons of devices and gives you the ability to pin them in as part of the OS.

So if you’ve got Android L or higher on your phone, here’s the quick and easy method of pinning them into an app.

Go to Settings, Security, turn Screen Pinning on.

Now when you want to keep a kid in an app, press the overview button, look at the app window and press the pin that appears in the lower right hand of the preview. The back and home buttons should not be able to escape the app.

The app is still escapable on phones with no security by long pressing overview and selecting a different app, but you can define a passcode to escape if you’re having that much trouble keeping a kid in an app.

Alternately you can also put a kid in Guest Mode, but that’s a whole ‘nother article there.