How do you lock the touch screen with an app still runing?

Hi all! As the father of a 17-month-old, I been looking for something like this for more than a year. Having given up, I went ahead and wrote it myself! I'm in the final round of beta testing, and should have it available in the App Store early next month. I'm excited to get it out there, and just wanted to give you all the heads up that it won't be much longer!

I'll post an update here once it's been published, but if you're interested you may want to sign up for notifications at http://littlefingersapp.com

Thanks!

thanks asoell, about to embark on a 8 hour flight with a 2 yo. Wish I booked it for next month by the looks of this.

And Michael Morgan1, if you're on this thread still - pretty unhelpful stuff earlier on. If you can't help then sit on your fingers. After all this is Apple Support Communities.

Awesome!!! Can't wait!

Hopefully this doesn't come across as too spammy, but LittleFingers is available in the App Store!

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/littlefingers-video-player/id544428007?mt=8

Hope you guys like it, if you have any suggestions, tips or questions, I'd love to hear them!

Thanks, asoell! My wife and I are flying across the country with our 17-month-old tomorrow, and we just started looking around for an app that will do this. What perfect timing that you just posted this link this morning! It works great so far.

How does your app prevent kids from just pressing the Home button to quit the app and then messing around with all the other app icons?

Julian Wright wrote:

How does your app prevent kids from just pressing the Home button to quit the app and then messing around with all the other app icons?

Unfortunately, you're right -- we can't do anything about that in our app at the moment. There are a number of hardware options to prevent access to the home button, though, and we've linked to a few on our support page: http://littlefingersapp.com/support

I can't go into specifics, but the upcoming update to iOS has some features that look promising as far as locking out access to the home button, so we're hopeful that we'll be able to do this in software in a future version.

Does this app let you watch YouTube or Internet content or just what's stored on the iPad?

Btw, I use the fisher price apptivity case to protect my home button. Works well.

http://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-Laugh-Learn-Apptivity-Case/dp/B0072BKZOQ/ref= pd_sim_t_1

Easy! Use iOS6's new feature called "Guided Access"

Go to Settings

Then to General

Scroll down to Accessibility

Click Learning On for Guided Accesss

Go to whichever video or App that you want to control

Triple Click the Home button in that video or App

Voila!

You can designate an area of the screen that you do not want to be touched

The Home bottom and Sleep buttons will be disabled by default

Just triple click the Home button again to go back to normal

Works wonders for my 2-year old

and lose google maps????

no way! 😉

still gald to hear some folks (Julian!) worked on an app for this issue, above and beyond apple's attempt to include it in v6...

When google maps is availble as a stand alone app I'll try the ios fix you mentioned though. not until then, sadly.

Lock screen in v6 does exactly what everyone in this thread asked Apple to do. They must have seen the thread.

By the way the Apple map app is excellent. I'm sure if I had nothing better to do I could find an error or two. However it works fine for my purposes and the graphics are better than Google maps.

What are you talking about. What version 6 ?

I am referring to version 6 of the Apple operating system, often called iOS6. It was launched earlier this year, so owners of existing Apple products, like iPads and iPhones, were able to upgrade and enjoy new applications and functions (though not everyone liked the new Maps app).

If you have iOS6 installed on your iPad, you have the ability to lock all or any part of your screen, so that it will no longer respond to touch - useful for watching movies or with children.

You access the function by triple clicking the home button and that is also how you deactivate it (kind of important, once the screen is locked!)

I hope this answers your questions.

This guided access feature allows you to do exactly what parents have been hoping for. That is the ability to start a video and then be able to hand the iPad to an infant who constantly presses the screen and home button. The video does not get interrupted. 3 clicks to activate it and 3 quick clicks to stop it and resume normal function of the iPad

I have to say, iOS 6's Guided Access functionality is pretty solid. I still think there's a place for LittleFingers, but I do love being able to have similar functionality in the built-in Movies app, Netflix, etc.