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It may seem a bad and useless idea to an iPad user, but suppose the iPad belongs to a restaurant and it wants to show it's menu to the customer on iPad for god knows what marketing reasons.

The restaurant's goal is that the user can only use the app which shows the menu and nothing else. He shouldn't be able to close the app without shutting down the device because the restaurant is afraid that the user may change some settings, e.g. uninstall the app. Also, if he or the personel do shut down the iPad, the app should autostart right after the device boots.

From what I found, it is not possible on a non-jailbroken device, see e.g.:

Make iPad Single App Device (or startup lock?)

shutdown iOS programmatically

Am I right here? Is it really NOT possible on a non-jailbroken device?

The restaurant of course doesn't plan to publish the app anywhere, so Apple's approval is not the factor here. The restaurant just doesn't wish to do the additional effort for jailbreaking many devices (it's unreliable, voids warranty etc). The restaurant also doesn't want to let the user install the app on his own device, the app should be only on the restaurant's device.

Even if this would work, a question arises how the tech support would uninstall or update such an app, since it's locking the device completely. From the app itself?

Thanks!

Community
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iseeall
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    What about just requiring a password to exit out of the app, e.g. a typical "kiosk mode?" – Matt Ball Oct 18 '11 at 13:01
  • Thanks a lot, I'll read up on that) – iseeall Oct 18 '11 at 13:15
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    Searching for "Kiosk mode" brought up similar questions: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3724968/ios-apple-is-there-way-any-for-the-application-to-ask-the-os-to-block-the-dev http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7654817/ios-kiosk-mode-coding – iseeall Oct 18 '11 at 13:23
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    @Matt Looks like it's impossible to prevent the user from exiting if he presses the Home button (e.g. with any kind of "Are you sure" or messages or passwords) http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7112723/ios-home-button-warning-is-it-possible. Did you implement password-protected exiting yourself or see an app doing that? I really don't know, I never used an iPhone or an iPad myself. – iseeall Oct 18 '11 at 13:37

2 Answers2

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A way to do it manually:

  • Make the following selection Settings->General->Accessiblity->Guided access and enable it and set the password

  • Open the app to be locked

  • Triple click the home button continuously that's it its the app gets locked

  • To unlock triple click the home button continuously give the password While it asks that's it app is unlocked

Note:

This solution works from iOS 6 only.

Durai Amuthan.H
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If that iPad is belonging to some restaurant they should encase the device in some sort of casing wich should cover the home and power buton. Problem solved! :P

Noji
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  • Seems like a rather inelegant solution to me. – Matt Ball Oct 18 '11 at 13:02
  • Thanks! Funny but still a nice solution if the casing has design as good as the iPad itself – iseeall Oct 18 '11 at 13:15
  • Apparently someone is already selling the casings exactly for such cases. http://ipadkioskmount.com/ Dunno however if the restaurant would want to pay $169 price for just a casing per iPad. – iseeall Oct 18 '11 at 13:43
  • I don't have any knowledge of how you could bypass the Home Button on any iDevice as a developer. Apple in their AppleStores is using same solution if I'm correct! – Noji Oct 18 '11 at 16:24