I’ve followed Apple for quite a while now, and I know (ostensibly) why Apple does not allow user profiles on iOS devices. It’s supposed to be a more personal device. It’s supposed to serve as (one of) the hubs of your computing experience. Your data. Your apps. Your way, right away.
(Wait, no, that’s Burger King.)
Anyway, I’m visiting my parents for the next couple of days, and I was reminded that we hand our so-very-personal devices to our small(er) children to play games, or listen to music, or whatever will keep them calm as we wait for a table at a restaurant (for example). And we have no option but to unlock our own phone and hand it to them.
Hopefully, they don’t erase your notes. Or your pictures. Or find pictures you wouldn’t want them to find. Or lock you out of your own bank account with too many invalid passwords. There are endless, anxiety-inducing ways they could (accidentally) tap some things they shouldn’t.
To alleviate that possibility, I’m proposing the following:
-
Anyone can attempt to authenticate on the device. If the ID is matched (both TouchID or FaceID work here), and that ID is not you, it simply shows the apps they have access to without unlocking the phone.
-
The apps available to the non-owner user (them) are apps that the owner (you) has granted access. Only want to allow your kid access to educational apps? No problem.
-
Diving deeper: The ID (I’m going to call them “profile"s from now on) can also have its own Apple ID attached to it. So that Notes and/or Photos (just for example) can show that profile’s user’s data and not the data associated with the owner.
For example, if your kid has access to Photos/Camera, they can take pictures all they want and those pictures are saved to their profile, and more importantly, their iCloud Photo Library, and not yours. Notes could work the same way.
- Diving even deeper: If space is a concern, the non-owner profiles can be limited to non-cached thumbnails and/or small versions of previously-taken images in Photos. Kind of like the shared albums do now, just without ever downloading the full image. In an Apple move, you could even have that feature set to “off” by default and have a setting buried deep for users who really want that feature.
There’s got to be a better way to “share” these devices with others and at the same time, protect your data and privacy.
