There may be times when you need to give your iPhone to someone. Maybe your little nephew wants to play a game or your friend wants to look at photos from your last vacation. Whatever the reason, no matter how much you trust this person, there are probably parts of your phone that you would rather not see (even accidentally).
This is where the new Face ID lock in iOS 18 comes into play: you can now make your iPhone ask for biometric authentication every time you launch a specific app. (While we'll always refer to Face ID throughout this article, if you're using an older phone with Touch ID, you can use that instead.) This means your friend or family member won't be able to jump straight into your private chat conversations or Your current conversations can be immersed in the dating app of your choice.
If you're thinking, “I'm sure I was able to lock apps with Face ID before iOS 18,” you're right—up to a point. The technology Was available, but it was up to the app developers to implement it. And aside from banking and finance apps, for the most part, we haven't seen many developers adding Face ID logins. (With some exceptions, such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.)
Lock apps in iOS 18
What's new after the introduction of iOS 18 is that any app can be locked with Face ID, regardless of whether the developer has integrated the function or not. Games, chat apps, social media – everything can now be protected with a Face ID login.
This brings another feature: the option to hide apps. This is available for all third-party apps, but not for apps installed with iOS 18. Hidden apps do not appear on home screens and have their own hidden folder in the App Library. You also won't receive notifications from hidden apps. So keep that in mind.
You can lock and unlock apps from the Home Screen or App Library:
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- Long press an app icon to bring up the app menu.
- Knock Face ID required to lock the app with Face ID.
- The following pop-up menu will ask you to confirm by tapping again Face ID required.
- Alternatively, you can tap in the second menu Hide and require facial recognition to lock the app with Face ID and hide it from your home screens.
- If you hide the app, you will be reminded that the app is only available in the App Library and you will no longer receive “notifications, calls, or critical alerts” from the app.
Whenever an app locked in this way is launched, it requires Face ID permission to actually open it, meaning no one but you can access it.
To remove the Face ID restriction, simply long press the app to go to the menu. If you chose to hide the app, you'll need to open the Hidden folder in the App Library to get back to the options. You'll also need to replace the icon on your home screen – it won't automatically reappear on the same page it was on before.
Stay in one app with Guided Access
There's another trick you can use when lending your phone to someone: set up the iOS Guided Access accessibility feature so the other person can only use one app or game on the device.
The feature can be activated via iOS settings:
- Knock accessibility And Guided Access.
- Turn that on Guided Access Toggle switch.
- Knock Passcode settings to set a custom passcode or enable Face ID.
Go to the app your friend or family member wants to use and launch Guided Access by triple-pressing the power button and selecting Guided Access and then start.
The navigation bar disappears and there is no way to switch to the home screens or another app. The only way out of Guided Access is to press the power button three times again – then Face ID authentication (or your custom passcode) is required.
With Face ID Lock or Guided Access – or a combination of both – you should be able to borrow your iPhone without worrying about what other people are doing on it.