Guided access allows you to limit access to specific areas of the screen. This is useful to prevent unintended gestures and touches from altering or even leaving the app you’re using.
For example, Thumbjam has many recording/looping features that are great, but most of the time are not needed. These can be switched on (intentionally or unintentionally) by enthusiastic participants – resulting in confusing noises! Guided Access allows us to limit the usable area of the screen to just the note playing area.
Enabling Guided Access and the Shortcut
The guided access shortcut allows us to quickly get to the guided access setup screen when using an app.
To allow guided access, find the iPad “Settings” app and open it.
Search for the “Guided Access” section, or locate it in Accessibility -> Guided Access.
Turn on the “Guided Access” option.
Also turn on the “Accessibility Shortcut” option. This allows a quick triple-click on one of the iPad’s physical buttons to open the guided access setup screen. If your iPad has a “Home” button (i.e. a physical button on the front of the ipad) this will be the shortcut button. If you don’t have a “Home” button, it’ll be the power/lock button on the top of the iPad.
N.B. If your shortcut is the power/lock button, you will need to restart the iPad to enable the shortcut! You can do this by holding the power and volume down buttons together until the “slide to power off” control appears. Slide it, then once powered off restart the iPad by holding the power button to turn back on.
You may also wish to set the “Display Auto-Lock” to “Never”. This will prevent the iPad from turning off its screen if not used for a while.
The Guided Access setup screen
Recommended: You should lock your screen orientation when using guided access – this stops changes in orientation (landscape/portrait) from disabling/changing your guided access regions. To do this, swipe down from the top right corner of your ipad and select the lock icon. If you don’t lock the screen, you’ll have to set up regions for both orientations.
Once you have an app started, triple-click your home or power button to open the Guided Access setup screen.
An interface will appear where you can simply draw over areas of the screen you don’t want users to access. We recommend drawing rectangles only – these are easier to resize and change later.
Once you have drawn all the areas you want, you can also disable or enable the power buttons, volume buttons, or other aspects in the “Options” menu.
Once you’ve set up, click “Start” in the top right corner. The iPad will ask for a code – enter one and remember it carefully! You’ll need this to disable Guided Access later.
Disabling Guided Access
Simply triple-click your shortcut button, and then enter the code you used to set up guided access.
Bugs
At least on our iPads (A16, iOS 18.3.2 as of 15/01/26), Guided Access has a significant bug.
When restarting guided access (after using it once) disabled regions don’t show always properly, but might work anyway.
However, frequently the regions show incorrectly and also do not actually function.
If this happens, you simply have to end the guided access session and “resume” it.
It’s always best to confirm guided access is actually working!
Official Guide
You can find the official guide for guided access here.
Having other issues? ask a question
