Always do this before giving your Android phone to someone

When a stranger, acquaintance, or even a friend borrows your phone to make a call, you want to make sure they don’t open other apps (accidentally or on purpose). Android lets you do just that with “app pinning” – here’s how it works.

How to enable app pinning

“Pinning” an app means that Android locks that app on the screen until you unlock it with your fingerprint or PIN. Without your unlock method, no one can leave the app. This works for any app, including streaming or gaming apps.

While an app is pinned, they cannot pull down the notification shade, see the status bar icons, incoming notifications, or the recent apps menu, nor can they navigate outside the pinned app. When they try to leave the app, a pop-up will appear with instructions on how to unpin the app. For example, if they need the Phone app, they will only be able to use that app until you take the phone back and unlock it.

App pinning is enabled by default on some Android devices, but not all. Let’s make sure it’s ready the next time your little niece or nephew wants to play a game on your phone. The exact menu names may vary depending on the manufacturer, but you’ll usually find app pinning in the advanced section of the security menu.

Open the Settings app, navigate to Password & Security, and open Advanced options. Look for a menu called App Pinning or Screen Pinning. Simply tap the slider to enable it.

You should also see a switch that allows you to secure pinned apps with your PIN or fingerprint. If this switch is off, anyone can unpin the app and access your phone. However, if it is on, the phone screen will lock right after you try to unpin it. And you will have to unlock it with a fingerprint or PIN as usual.

On Android 8.1 and lower, the feature is enabled by default.

How to pin and unpin apps

With app pinning set up, you can start pinning apps. First, launch the app you want to pin and open the Recent Apps menu (App Overview). Above the floating app window, you’ll see the app name and a button with the cursor. Tap the name or button to bring up the additional overview options. Select Pin. The app should be pinned immediately. You might even see a message like this (just tap Got It to remove it). Now it’s safe to hand the phone over.

When you get the phone back, you can unpin the app and use the phone normally. Android will instruct you with a short toast message how to unpin the app, but all you need to do to unpin an app is hold down the back and overview buttons at the same time or swipe. Once you do that, you’ll be taken to the phone’s lock screen where you can unlock the phone using your biometric or PIN access. But what if you use gesture navigation?

With gesture navigation, app pinning works the same way. You simply swipe up and drag to access the recent apps and pin your favorite app. To unpin it, you need to swipe up and hold. This will take you to the lock screen. Sometimes it takes multiple attempts because Android doesn’t give any indication or respond to that particular gesture.

If you need to share your phone with someone but they need more than one app, you can even set up a guest mode for them for maximum privacy. Guest mode is a sandbox where you can switch to an empty sandbox that looks and works exactly like your phone did when you first started it up.