Is it possible to lock certain apps? Like to need a password to open an app. Any help is greatly appreciated.
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Is it possible to lock certain apps? Like to need a password to open an app. Any help is greatly appreciated.
It isn't a native feature and I don't think there are apps for that, but you're free to browse AppWorld, you may get lucky.
My guess is you have kids who keep racking up the credit card with in app purchases;)
Sort of. I just want to lock things such as the browser and app world so random junk cant be installed on my playbook.
Well, to make sure people don't install junky apps from App World, just don't leave App World open and don't tell people your BBID password. For the browser, you can't install apps from it, but I can't think of any way to block files from being downloaded. You could just go to the downloads folder on your PlayBook and delete anything people put on it though...
Password locking stuff is not just about restricting access to the App World.
This was my post on the BB beta zone. Unfortunately, it went pretty much unnoticed...
Security wise... tablets are prone to different types of "privacy breach".
A smart phone is often considered a very personal item, and also a boring item. Therefor, people don't usually borrow them unless they have a specific need they have to fulfill, such as making a phone call. Being considered such a personal item, people are unlikely to just pick it off the table and start playing with it.
A tablet on the other hand... is a whole different story. A tablet is a novelty item and it attracts the masses. Just like a desktop, people think it can openly be shared and whatnot. So people think they can just pick it off the table and start playing with it if it's sitting there idle. Or your-self, you may decide to hand it over to someone so they can show you their skills at that latest game or app you installed. You are more likely to let someone use your tablet and walk away for a few moment, than you are of doing the same thing with your phone.
Therefor, the "lock down" requirements are different from a phone to a tablet. Your phone doesn't need to be as locked down since it's always in your sight, your tablet can walk away from you, or you can walk away from your tablet. While the tablet is out of your sight, who knows what's going on. Since people don't treat tablets like they treat phones, they are more likely to start snooping around while you're not looking. Sometimes you may want to control access to certain Apps, or you may want to "hide" some applications.
Having said that, I believe we need a way to password protect some of our stuff on the Playbook.The Lock mechanism could be applied to individual icons in the App menu, or there could be a lock mechanism applied to Folders. So you could create a Password protected folder and dump all the apps you want to protect in there. On the "Press and Hold" gesture, instead of giving only the option to delete, there could be a "Settings" option where a password could be set.
A kids mode would be nice. I can't remember how many times my kid has deleted apps from my playbook. It's nice that they're easily re-installed, but still a pain in the .
I understand what you mean now. Unfortunately there's no native way of doing this, nor is it possible for any app to do anything to any other app (unless both apps are purposely working together, ie making changes to a file that gets read in another app to turn on a setting, but that's a fairly high hassle workaround). it may be possible with rooting, but if you have upgraded your OS anytime from mid-February onward you can't root as far as I know. Your best option would either be to keep nagging RIM and hope they do something about it (unlikely though, since they're focusing mostly on BB10) or to hide all of the apps you don't want people to use somewhere people won't notice them.
I think locking certain apps and/or files would be a terrific feature.
I read somewhere that there is a file locker sort of thing built in to blackberry. It was used to separate work apps from other apps. Can anyone confirm this?
It's called Balance and there is a whole security structure around it to seperate work from personal, both apps and files. It's supposed to be in 2.1 when released. Not sure if this will work if your not tied into the corporate sturcture.
Would putting the PlayBook into demo mode along with file shield help you out.
Jean-luc, you obviously don't have kids.
I guess we will see when 2.1 is (hopefully) released tomorrow.