We all once had to handover our phone with all our private stuff to our friends or colleagues and mostly family members for one reason to another. The problem lies with a privacy breach which results when someone accidentally or intentionally starts accessing stuff on the phone which he isn’t supposed to unless proper permission has been given. But then what’s the solution? It is quite simple on an Android: Just use the Guest Mode!
While handing over your phone to someone else for a short period it is important to realize that you are giving him access to everything unless you gave him the phone with Guest Mode enabled. More often we see ‘silly’ posts on our social media newsfeed posted by someone who has had access to a friend’s phone. Moreover, they don’t mind seeing your gallery either or opening your messages or dropping a text to your crush either. Therefore with Guest Mode turned on you can avoid these situations happening to quite an extent.
As to the question on how to actually enable Guest Mode on your Android, let us go through some steps for that.
Not every phone Guest Mode capable
It just needs mentioning that sorry to say but not every Android phone supports Guest Mode. Usually, you can find Nexus or the Pixel to be Guest Mode capable and some LG phones do too. Though, it rather depends on the version of Android you are on. Therefore, if you find yourself running a flavor of Android 5.0 or higher, then you are in safe hands. Though the method to enable Safe Mode could be different on different phones, but more or less the way to do so is similar.
Enabling Guest Mode
For this article, we have used Google Pixel 2 and One Plus T as an example on which to turn on the Guest Mode. For the Google Pixel 2, just head over to your phone Settings. Then go to Users and accounts and then select Users and then finally tap Guests.
After making up to this part, you just need to set up a profile if you haven’t ever. For this just tap on Add new user and then press OK followed by another OK. The rest is pretty simple after this. If you ever want to easily enable the guest mode from wherever you are, just pull down the notification menu, and then tap on the human-like figure. This would most probably be around the Date. After that just tap on the Guest option to enable the Guest Mode.
For the One Plus 5T, the process is similar but you just have to press the User icon. It is basically being depicted by a person inside a circle. After this just tap on Add guest. Now have your mind in peace while giving your phone to another person. Once the other person is over with that, just press User icon and then tap Remove Guest and then Remove.
It is plain and simple like this. Hope this feature would come in handy for you folks out there who feel insecure handing over your personal phone to a third person.