Google has introduced a new feature called Screen Pinning in Android 5.0 Lollipop. I would say it’s most useful for those of you with kids in the house or if your handing your phone or tablet to someone who has zero technical know-how.
Screen Pinning allows you to “pin” any app you want so that the user cannot do anything else but use that particular app. For example, you could start up a game and hand your phone or tablet to your child. He or she won’t be able to exit out of the game (at least easily) and send an email telling your boss to go to hell.
In this guide, I will walk you through how to pin any app. If you prefer to watch a video instead, scroll down to the bottom.
The first thing you will need to do is turn on the option for Screen Pinning. Head into Settings on your Android device, and scroll down to Security. It will be on the main screen of Settings for most Android devices, but you might have to select a tab on some devices. For example, you will find Security in the General tab on Samsung devices. Tap on Security and scroll down until you see Screen Pinning and make sure it’s turned on or checked.
Now in order to pin an app, it has to be in the Recent Apps and it has to be the last used app. This is where things are a little convoluted. Assuming you want to pin Angry Birds and hand your phone or tablet over to your daughter, you will need to open the actual app, then tap on the Recents key. Now just scroll up a little on the app, which should now be the most recent one. You should see a little Pin icon at the bottom right. Tap on that Pin and a popup will appear asking you if you want to actually pin the app. If you happen to be using a security lock screen, you will also have the option to check if you want your security of choice to be entered before unpinning. If you don’t, it’s not too hard to close the app and go anywhere else on the device. All the user has to do is tap and hold the Back and Recents keys at the same time. If you enable security, the person will also have to enter your PIN or swipe your pattern.
It’s also not like Google is hiding the procedure to get out of a pinned app either. If the user taps on the Recents or Home key while an app is pinned, they will see a popup telling them which keys to tap and hold.
Users will only have access to the Back key when using a pinned app. They won’t see your notifications or be able to get into anything else. They can access the Share menu, but it won’t function. The display can timeout and they will be able to get back into the app by simply hitting the power button. If you happen to have a security lock screen enabled, it will be bypassed since the user can’t do anything else anyway. Good thinking on Google’s part.
I put together a video showing you how it all works.
Click here to view the embedded video.
I hope this guide helped you. If I missed something, please let me know in the comments, and be sure to check out our other Android Lollipop guides here.
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