Beware of iPhone „Restrictions“ mode

When sitting in a cafe with two other smartphone users, we spoke about „kids-safe“ restricted mode in the different smartphone systems and how they differ from the restrictions mode in the iPhone. In order to demo (and try it out), I did set my iPhone in the restrictions mode „on“ and we analyzed and nodded about nearly all the features.

What surprised my, was, that my self-programmed apps where still there – obviously you have to load them from the app store or my apps where missing some information that app store apps have e.g. like age restrictions.

Then it was time to set the settings back to normal and there came the shocking moment: All Icons were in disorder, they had left their groups, the sorting in the home-screen pages on the iphone were a mess.
I wondered, what would have happened, if I would have had so much icons that the sheer number would not fit on the screen, because I had them all grouped? If you know, feel free to comment.

Of course, I could have made a backup, or re-loaded a previous backup, but unfortunately, I did not know about this hazard and I already had made changes after my last backup a day ago.

So my learning from this experiment: Kids restrictions settings are not for temporary use. If you want to hand over an iPhone to a kid, put it in restricted mode only, if you can live with the disorder afterwards or if you had over the iPhone for a longer time. Or make a backup before handing over.