Why Don’t Smartphones Have A “Guest Mode”?

Somewhat related: I've long wondered why ATM cards don't have something similar.<p>1234 is my regular PIN. 1235 is my help I'm being robbed PIN -- it dispenses the cash, calls the cops, and tags the video.

I'm more bewildered to why no tablets seem to have multi-user functionality. In my experience, tablets get shared far more often than phones.

These guys are kind of working in this: <a href="http://www.famigo.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.famigo.com/</a><p>Their approach is targeted at kids though, I'd love to see someone tackle the general purpose approach.<p>Sounds like a great project for someone with a lot of free time. I rememeber hearing that the guy who came up with what is currently the ios notification style was hired by Apple after his jailbroken hack.<p>The void is wide open for someone to solve this well and be rewarded for it

"Why Don’t Smartphones Have A Guest Mode?"<p>Because dealing with multiple profiles and/or different profile types is a fucking huge giant pain the ass and a monumental amount of work! Xbox has local, guest, live silver, and live gold accounts. Dealing with all the different profiles and switching between is a nightmare. Urgh, no thanks.

The "two PINs" idea would also be great for when a police officer pulls you over and asks you to hand over and unlock your phone. With the proper encryption you could even have plausible deniability.

This is also why any app that handles sensitive information (including, arguably, the photo and video galleries) on a phone should have at least the _option_ to set an in-app PIN that's required before it opens up.<p>Lots of folks hand their smartphone to their kids to play games and even if there's nothing sensitive on there, they might have things they don't want deleted like treasured photos and videos.

there are at least a few big companies already doing virtualization with android to separate business and personal modes so that corporate email and other apps can be quarantined off with a secure password, leaving personal email and games to run in a separate environment that may not require as much security to unlock.<p>presumably the same technology could be used to provide "normal" and guest environments.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydXJjCN2G-A" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydXJjCN2G-A</a>

I'd benefit from a "Driving Mode" on my phone. If John, Rachel, or Stan calls, auto-text them: "I'm driving, can't talk". Everyone else goes straight to voicemail. If they send me a text within 5 minutes of that call (must be serious), make the font huge so I can read it in .5 seconds on my console. Hide all other texts.<p>I'd like to be truly responsible and just turn my phone off, but I don't to allow for those few times when there actually is something important.

HTC Sense has something called modes - which allow you to put your phone in profiles that switch data off, or the keyboard off, etc. They recently acquired Inquisitive Minds for a "kids mode" (<a href="http://www.androidguys.com/2011/10/18/htc-acquires-inquisitive-minds-developer-of-zoodles/" rel="nofollow">http://www.androidguys.com/2011/10/18/htc-acquires-inquisiti...</a>) which is pretty much guest mode.

Ironically, Arrington still "writes" for Techcrunch<p><a href="https://twitter.com/#!/arrington/status/27763718700" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/#!/arrington/status/27763718700</a>

Web browsers have been around since 92, first usable guest mode [1] on a web browser appeared 2005 or so. Give the phones a little more time, and it will get there too.<p>[1] mozilla had multiple profile support since forever, but it required you to restart the browser with a command line argument, or requires you to pick a profile <i>every time</i>, and even then it's not "guest" profile -- it's another profile with history and all. When I needed multiple profiles, it was always easier to set up another user on Linux. [On windows, at least in the 2000 days, the new browser would defer to the old one that was already on screen even if they were RunAs different users -- a different "desktop session" was required for separation. bleh]

I was going to write a tweak for iOS to do something like this, with behavior similar to that of the built in Camera shortcut from the lockscreen.<p>1. You are using an app<p>2. You activate 'Guest mode' using a button press, swipe, tap, etc. (configurable)<p>3. If the user hits the home button, it redirects to the lockscreen instead of the homescreen (much like the Camera application does in lock-mode)<p>4. Instead of the camera icon on the lockscreen when you double tap, it is the icon of the locked-in application. (You can tap it to resume use of the locked-in application)<p>5. To disable this guest mode, you simply unlock the device with your passcode.<p>So, when a friend asks "Hey can I check my email?", you can open Safari, enable this guest mode, and hand the phone to him, no worries.<p>What do you think?

Yes, yes from a guy who has to nervously hope that as his Dad looks up something on his phone while having family dinner, he doesn't end up in my SMS or Photos app. It'd ruin the dinner. And some.

As far as I'm concerned the only 'Guest Mode' I need on my phone is the emergency call screen. I'm totally willing to be the 'weirdo' who won't let someone use his phone.

The reason I don't log on someone else's phone is not because they don't want me to, is because I don't want to! Just the same reason why I usually don't log in on an untrusted computer.<p>Maybe just for browsing the internet it would be allright, but I won't hand over my passwords. Isn't there any keylogger yet for android/ios? You don't even need to go by the store/marketplace, just local, developper stuff and there you go. Do you want to log on my machine?

Smartphones seem to have mostly sacrificed some of their security for convenience.<p>Take Windows for example, sure you <i>can</i> setup multiple user accounts with different levels of privilege , access to website and apps etc but how many people outside of a corporate or academic setting actually <i>use</i> this?<p>Whenever I borrow someones laptop they just use their own login, sometimes I find porn in their Internet history but at the end of the day who cares?<p>Perhaps this is more of a problem for people with kids who might want to use the internet themselves but when their child uses it they don't want them to have access to certain sites or see that their parent has accessed certain sites.<p>One issue I have with android is that when I clear the history in the browser and delete all cookie etc etc.<p>If I hit the back button it still goes <i>back</i> to whatever I visited last , also if I goto google and tap the search bar all my previous searches come up. It's not really very privacy friendly.<p>Hopefully this problem will pass once everyone has a smartphone so they don't need to borrow someone elses.

Users can, when choosing the right ROM.. hooray for choice!<p>Guest mode: enable the “Guest Mode” toggle in the panel, and your calls and text messages logs will be hidden, and all installed applications cannot be removed. You may have a try when you need to show your phone to guests or children.<p><a href="http://en.miui.com/a-10.html" rel="nofollow">http://en.miui.com/a-10.html</a>

The guest mode is a great idea. But for now, if you have very private stuff on your Android phone, you can lock down on an app-per-app basis. This could be a little inconvenient, though, and either you always keep them password protected, or you have to remember to protect them before you give the phone to someone.

This is something I've wondered quite a bit also. ChromeOS already has this feature -- it's the idea of the device simply acting as a terminal, with all user data stored in the cloud.<p>Also, I'm a bit afraid implementing full-featured multiple user sessions (similar to a desktop OS) would lead to a lot more bloat.

Seems like Apple is planning to implement multi-user mode in iOS with face recognition based login ie a user just enter his PIN, however, the camera detects which account to load. (IMHO, more secure than the current Android implementation) Article talking about related patent: <a href="http://www.cultofmac.com/137393/apple-patent-details-facial-recognition-plans-for-macs-ios-devices/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cultofmac.com/137393/apple-patent-details-facial-...</a><p>I would imagine at that time, they might support Guest logins.<p>EDIT: the implementation detail of Face recognition talked above is my own take on how it should be done. Not suggested by the referenced article.

VMWare has virtualization working on Android, which supports this in a heavy-weight kind of way. See <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/15/vmware-android-handset-virtualization-hands-on/" rel="nofollow">http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/15/vmware-android-handset-vi...</a> and <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/09/samsung-boosts-vmware-plan-to-virtualize-android-phones-tablets.ars" rel="nofollow">http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/09/samsung-boosts-...</a><p>The use-case for it usually suggested is one VM for work, one for personal use, but it could be used for this scenario too.

<a href="http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/10/07/Robot-Road#p-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/10/07/Robot-Road...</a><p>Quote: Which has revealed a feature that the Tab needs: a button in Gmail called “in strange hands”. The device is profoundly shareable, but mine has my Google email, full of threads that are distinctly not for public eyes. So I need to switch to disable that while letting people look at interesting web sites or play games or check stock prices or whatever. End Quote

On Android there is an app called "Hide it Pro" [1] (aka Audio Manager) that allows you to hide pictures and videos. The app disguises itself as an audio manager in the app drawer. To access the hidden files you have to type a PIN code. There is also an escape PIN if you get caught hiding files. Clever idea.<p>[1] <a href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.smartanuj.hideitpro" rel="nofollow">https://market.android.com/details?id=com.smartanuj.hideitpr...</a>

i love that almost everything in this thread would be added shortly if we had control of our phones. why isnt there a bigger open hardware phone movement? how about a new GPLv4? GPLed software can only be shipped on GPLed hardware. it can be installed later but the user gets to see an ad explaining what they cannot do with their phone, and possibly alternate carriers that support open hardware.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently. Guest account too, but mainly other user accounts. Not for phones but for tablets, these tend to get shared more - there's a way to have multiple user accounts on iPad but this requires jailbreaking, something I'm not too fond of. It'd be nice that each family member can use their own instances of mail and safari etc...

The MIUI rom for Android sort of does this. It has a privacy mode which hides calls and text messages and locks down the homescreen.

I would take this one step further and have smartphones/tablets with cloud based "login" for your accounts, apps, preferences etc. While you would probably only use it a few times a year it would be great when getting a new phone, swapping phones with friends to try them out or to borrow a phone if you are out of juice.

Interesting idea, but I don't see many use cases.<p>Are people really handing their phones out that often?<p>I only hand my phone to someone else when:<p>* I've asked them to take a photo of me.<p>* They're riding shotgun in my car and need to call a contact or navigate with info readily available on my phone.<p>Neither situation is risk for people snooping around.

Guest Mode has already been requested by many people: <a href="http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=7472" rel="nofollow">http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=7472</a>

Probably for the same reason a lot of other good features don't get implemented: there are higher more impactful features to be implemented first, a bigger bang for the company's buck.

And this is why me and my family get way more use out of a Chromebook rather than our Android tablet.<p>Please make Android grow multi-user capabilities or give me ChromeOS in a tablet format.

...and this is why developers should never be in charge of usability/design.<p>simplification enhances usability. the vast majority of smartphone and tablet users are <i>happy</i> that all that complicated IT/nerd stuff went away on their devices.<p>the complications you would introduce by user switching are big. you need to add UI elements to tell the user at all times in which mode they are, you need new dialogs to switch, etc etc. the android status bar already looks like a badly maintained win xp install with all that crap in it.<p>built by developers for developers. brrr.

The idea sounds awesome... but how many on us even have the guest account enabled on our laptops?

Why don't computers have a "party mode"? (locking everything but youtube and spotify).

My Mac has a guest mode, but I never use it. Do you?

Better yet, why hasn't anyone created an app that just <i>simulates</i> a guest mode? A launcher with two sets of home screens would be perfect. <i>Or</i>, you just disable your preferred launcher when handing your phone to a friend, revealing the mostly barren stock screens. It's as simple as hiding icons, since the apps might as well not exist if the icons aren't there (access doesn't actually need to be explicitly forbidden, per se).<p>Maybe I'm missing something important here, but it seems many apps on the Android market are just a few tweaks away from doing this already?

Hell, I want a guest mode on my computer. Instead I need to just have netbooks available for when company wants to check their email.

a phone in guest mode would be totally useless.<p>case 1: no apps. guest has to install apps. will guest have a itunes/android market account? does he enter his Credit card to buy paid ones he want to use?<p>case 2: apps with no data from real user. He opens up foursquare/yelp to look for a restaurant... has to create profile

For the guy with friends that he doesn't trust. Actually, for the guy who <i>thinks</i> he has friends.

Privacy is important. But why not just avoid keeping weird stuff on your phone? Keep it somewhere else. Or say, "hold on let me log out of my bank app" or something.