Kiosk Mode

Kiosk mode locks a phone or a tablet to one app, so the home button, notifications, browser and app store all stop being reachable. That leaves the person in front of the screen able to do the job and nothing else. Android and the iPad both have this built in, so switching it on costs nothing.

You have seen it without knowing the name, on the tablet at a coffee counter where staff tap in the order. The same setting runs the handheld a shop assistant carries down the aisle to count stock. It also runs the screen by a gym door where members type a number to check in. The device belongs to the business, so every minute spent elsewhere on it is a minute taken from the work.

The quiet benefit is the mistakes it prevents, because a tablet that cannot leave the ordering screen will not play a video at the till. It will not show a private message in the middle of a stock count, and nobody can sign out of the app by accident. The next shift then never arrives at eight in the morning to find a locked screen. Most of what goes wrong on a shared device is not theft but drift, and this setting removes the drift.

Setting it up is a matter of degree, and the degree should match who holds the device. Android has a simple version called screen pinning, which anyone can switch on in seconds and anyone can switch off again. The stronger version needs the tablet registered as a company device, and then only the office can leave the app. Apple offers Guided Access for a single device and a locked single-app setting for a managed fleet, so take the stronger one for anything a customer can touch.

The first thing that catches people out is an update or a restart, because either one can drop the device out of the locked app. It then has to return to that app by itself when it powers on. The second is that the manager needs a way back in that is not a code on tape stuck to the back of the tablet. The counter screens in Storek and the check-in screen in Nadiva are built to run locked like this, and Linkysoft sets the same rules on any app made for a shop floor. Before a shop buys ten of them, Linkysoft usually asks it to live with one locked tablet for a week.