This is an essential trick every parent should know – if you have a spare iPhone that you use for kids. It turns a smartphone into a dumbphone, with only the apps you choose.
And it’s a hidden feature that has always been in the iPhone menu. This is how you turn it on.
Go to Settings, then Accessibility and scroll right to the bottom of Assistive Access. Then start the process.
You can specify an amazing amount of detail in what apps can and can’t access when the iPhone is in this mode.
When you ‘add’ apps to the assistive access mode, it asks if you want it to give the app permission to access: the camera, the microphone, the phone’s photos and contacts, location, or use Bluetooth.
Specific apps like Google Maps ask for more specific permissions, like seeing what music you’re playing, I noticed. Apps that require internet access seem to automatically get it, although Safari’s only setting option was for allowing location tracking. You can choose a large icon layout, or a list, with the former just being more suitable.
I loaded Audible to test it. It works perfectly. I had previously downloaded the first three Harry Potter novels read by Stephen Fry, which showed up in the app.
You can also, crucially, as I discovered, show the battery status in the taskbar. Of lesser use is showing the time, but it seems almost alien to look at a phone screen and not see the time, so I activated it.
You start the assistive access mode in the menu and turn it off by clicking on the power button three times – and entering a four-digit passcode you used during the set-up.
And then you have a very expensive dumbphone. It’s a really simple solution to letting a youngster have access to a smartphone (an iPhone no less), just with limited functionality.
