What's up guys, my name's Brandon.
And today I'm going to be showing you how to lock applications on your iPhone
using face ID, touch ID, or a passcode.
And this is going to work on iOS 14,
iOS 15 and likely future versions of iOS as well. Now,
keep in mind that this is not a native feature of iOS, at least not yet.
So there's no smooth, you know, intuitive way to do this,
but this little hack that I'm going to be showing you in this video today will
still get the job done until apple eventually makes this a built-in
feature. So there are a couple of ways to hide and you know,
kind of lock applications.
But the main one we're going to be showing today has to do with the shortcuts
application. It's actually an automation built in to shortcuts.
So we're going to go ahead and jump straight into this.
So what'd you guys need to do is go ahead into these shortcuts application.
And once you're on this page right here,
just go to the automation tab down at the bottom from here,
go ahead and tap on the plus up in the top rights, tap on,
create personal automation and you want to go down until you see app right here,
go and select on app. You want to make sure that it's on is opened.
And from here,
you're going to be able to select the applications you want to lock.
So go ahead and tap on app.
And from here you could select any application you want,
that you want to lock on your phones. Let's say, I want a lock Snapchat.
Let's say I want a lock Tesla. Let's say I want to lock. I don't know,
YouTube and Zillow.
So those are the applications you could choose as many as you want.
Let's go and tap on done right here. Let's go to next. And from here,
we're going to go ahead and tap on add action. And from here,
we're just going to go ahead and search for timer and with timer,
you could see that start timer comes up. That's what we want to select.
So go ahead and tap on start timer then from here top where it shows 30,
that is the default value. And they're right there.
Let's go ahead and tap on one.
So enter in one and we're going to change this from minutes to seconds that way
after one second, the start timer action triggers.
So from there we go ahead and tap on next and you can see now kind of a summary
of what this automation does. So when any of these applications are opened,
do start timer and I'll show you how this all kind of ties together here in a
moment. But you want to make sure to de-select ask before running.
We don't want this to ask if we want to run the automation.
So we're going to go ahead and tap on. Don't ask, tap on done. And there we go.
That's it. However, it's still not complete.
Now we need to go into our clock application to go ahead and find the clock
application. Then go to timer. And from here,
you want to go to when a timer ends and you want to go ahead all the way down to
the bottom and select stop playing. So select stop playing on the timer,
go and tap on sets. And it doesn't matter what you set the timer as right there.
Just make sure that when timer ends is set on,
stop playing and now the automation will work.
So let me go ahead and show you how it works.
So let's try to open up an application. Let's just say Snapchat.
So now when we try to open up Snapchat and you can see,
it gives us the notification that the shortcut has,
and it takes us right back to the lock screen,
or we have to put in our face ID or touch ID or our passcode.
So it basically goes into the application for one second and then it runs the
command to set the timer and that timer is set to stop playing and that biscuit
sends it back to the lock screen.
So you guys will notice that when you go ahead and open up one of these
applications,
you could see you get a notification up there from the shortcuts application.
And then also it appears on the lock screen. As you can see right here,
open any of our apps, running your automation. Now,
if he wants to get rid of this notification, you can actually do that.
So it's not as easy as going into your notification settings.
There's kind of a little workaround for this.
So what you want to do is go ahead into your settings and then go to screen time
and then go to see all activity,
go all the way down to the bottom until you see notifications right down here.
And this is where we're going to go ahead and select shortcuts. Now,
if it doesn't show up right here, you can see mine does show up,
but you can't actually click on it.
So there's no little arrow over there to click on shortcuts. So to bypass this,
just tap on this back arrow right here, and then back to the front arrow,
just like, so, and then you should see shortcuts. Now has the arrow.
We can go ahead onto it right here.
We can just go ahead and disallow notification.
So now when we go ahead and open up one of those applications, you can see,
we can do not get any shortcuts notification,
and it just goes back to the lock screen.
And whoever is on your phone will be very confused as to why your phone just
went to his lock screen,
because he won't even see any type of notification from the shortcuts
application. Now, if you want to disable this, it's very easy. Just go ahead,
back into the shortcuts application,
go to the automation you just created right here.
And then just simply disable the automation. So right where it says,
enable this automation, de-select that press done?
And I can go ahead and open up these applications just like normal,
and it will not kick you back to the lock screen. Now, of course,
the one downside to doing this method is that you'll be using your clocks timer.
So inside of clock and timer,
you can not change that from when timer ends to like a certain sound.
It always needs to stay on stop playing. So that could be a disadvantage,
you know, or kind of a downside a con to using this method.
If you use the timer for things.
But one thing you can do as I kind of work around is just to, you know,
play some music. And when your timer goes off, like when you set this,
let's just say we set it to three minutes right here.
When we go and press on start, the timer still works. So in three minutes,
you know, I'm playing music or I'm playing a YouTube video or whatever,
when those three minutes were up, the music will just stop playing.
So I'll know. So that's one kind of workaround. So that, of course it's not,
you know, the bass it's not natively built in,
but that is one kind of way around that,
where you'll still know when the timer goes off.
It's just whenever your media stops playing and set up a sound.
Now there is also another way to kind of lock and hide applications on your
iPhone through screen time. So this is just kind of an alternate way to do this,
and it's not the same by any means, but you can go ahead and do this.
I just want to share this as well in this video in case guys did not know about
this. So if you go into your settings and go to screen time right here,
and then go to content and privacy restrictions, and then enable this,
you can actually kind of restrict and fully hide applications from your home
screen. So for instance, if it go to, let's just say aloud apps right here,
you could disallow certain apps from even showing up on the home screens.
Like for example, if I chose on safari right here,
you will notice that safari just disappeared from my home screen.
I can't search for it. So even if I searched for safari, nothing comes up.
I can not get to safari in any way when this is set up and to disable this,
you actually have to put in your passcode, if you do set a passcode right there.
So this could be another way to kind of hide applications on your iPhone or
locked applications on your iPhone. If you wants to reenable it,
of course he could put it right there.
And one thing you may have noticed is that inside of aloud applications,
you don't see every application. It's only certain ones,
but if you wanted to hide things like your social media apps, like Instagram,
Snapchat, and things like that,
you could go into here and then go to content restrictions. And then from here,
you can go to apps and then only allow apps that are nine plus.
So four plus or nine plus,
and that will hide all of your social media applications.
And the reason for that is because most social media applications require users
to be 12 and older. So if you put it on four or nine, plus it's going to hide,
you know,
social media applications or any application that the users have to be,
you know, above 12 four.
So that's just one little workaround as well for kind of hiding or locking
applications on at your iPhone. So again,
neither of these are perfect solutions,
but nothing ever will be until apple implements this feature in a future
iOS release, which who knows when that will be.
We've been asking for this to be built into iOS for a very long time.
Now I would love to just be able to simply have to press on an icon right here
and there just be an action for lock. And then when I go to try to open it up,
it gives me the little face ID icon.
I have to scan my face to get into the application. That would be, you know,
what happens in an ideal world, but we're just not there yet.
We have to use these little workarounds, like with shortcuts for the time being.
But if you guys found this tutorial helpful, I would appreciate a thumbs up.
And if you want a short, easy digestible version of this video,
you can find that on my tech talk page,
which is also linked down below that video did pretty well over on Tik talks to
that kind of motivated me to do a full fledged video here on YouTube,
on locking applications on your iPhone. But yeah, guys,
I hope you enjoyed the video.
And if you want to see future iPhone tricks and hacks,
make sure to subscribe to the channel because I will be bringing a lot more of
those to the channel later on this year. But anyways, guys,
thanks again for watching.
[inaudible].