With the success of the social sharing app Photo Party Upload in the photo booth space many operators are now beginning to offer social kiosks. This “how to” shows you how you can lock your iPad down so that users can only access your social sharing app and not the full iPad.
Basic requirements for performing this how-to are:
- iPad 2 or higher
- iOS 6.0 or higher
- Social kiosk app
In this example I will be using the Photo Party Upload app to demonstrate, but these instructions will work for any app that you want to use.
So why do we want to enable Guided Access in our photo booth social kiosk?
- Temporarily restrict your iOS device to a particular app
- Disable areas of the screen that aren’t relevant to a task, or areas where an accidental gesture might cause a distraction
- Disable the hardware buttons
Now that we've cleared that up let's get started.
Tap Settings > General > Accessibility > Guided Access to set up Guided Access. From there you can:
- Turn Guided Access on or off
- Set a passcode that controls the use of Guided Access and prevents someone from leaving an active session
- Set whether the device can go to sleep during a session
Start a Guided Access session
- Open the app you want to run.
- Triple-click the Home button.
- Adjust settings for the session, then click Start.
Disable app controls and areas of the app screen
- Circle any part of the screen you want to disable.
- Use the handles to adjust the area.
Ignore all screen touches
- Turn off Touch.
Keep iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from switching from portrait to landscape or from responding to any other motions
- Turn off Motion.
End a Guided Access session
- Triple-click the Home button.
- Enter the Guided Access passcode.
That's it. Hopefully this guide will be helpful for your photo booth business as you introduce your social kiosk.
