Whether or not you like to hand your phone to the kids they are a great way to keep them busy in many different situations. Out to dinner and your 4 year old is getting fidgety, hand him/her your phone and let them play for a bit to calm them down. This said kids can do a number on phones and have them so messed up that you have no idea what they did or how to fix it. You may even have files missing that are important without realizing they are gone until you go looking for them. There has been more than once even I have had to factory reset a device sue to my daughter having a little fun with settings.
No matter what you may think its very difficult to keep your kids off your phone but now you can hand it to them without worrying about anything with the Galaxy S5 Kids Mode. Before Kids Mode there were other solutions like third-party apps and Amazons very own FreeTime for their Kindle Fire tablets although none quite so easy or feature rich. Once setup the Galaxy S5 Kids Mode allows one tap child friendly mode making it as easy as humanly possible.
All this said Kids Mode is just another parental control app with all of the settings and security you would expect, although with its second completely separate environment makes everything kid friendly as well as easily cleaned out. A brief list of what the GS5 Kids Mode does for you is as follows:
- Protects sensitive data with its separate environment and parental controls
- Allows addition of more kid friendly apps, games and books
- Nearly impossible for your children to bypass kids mode once active
- Comes pre-installed with 5 kid friendly apps to allow use right away
- Very easy to use for both children and parents
How to Setup and Use Galaxy S5 Kids Mode
Generally Kids Mode will not be installed completely on the device but will have a widget to allow you to add and download the missing files easily. Here are the instructions in order to setup Kids Mode so that its ready when your child wants the phone:
- Long press on an empty spot on any home screen until you are in edit mode
- tap widgets and search through them for the kids mode icon (little alligator)
- long press the icon and place it on your home screen wherever you prefer for easy access
- If you notice that the icon has a small down arrow on it tap it to open and download the missing files.
- After opening the kids mode app for the first time you will need to setup a PIN (only used for kids mode and is completely separate from all other phone security)
- Next you will need to setup a child profile (currently only allows 1 profile to be setup)
- Here you will add your childs name and birthday as well as a photo if you choose to do so.
- Congrats you have kids mode setup and ready to use!
Once installed and setup you will notice that there are two small icons on the bottom right. Both of these require your PIN to access one of them being the Menu for parental controls and the other to exit kids mode. The first being the menu will give you the following options to setup beyond default features:
- Edit the profile you created earlier
- Check the activities that your children are using like time used and most used apps
- Set time limits for your kids to limit their play time each day
- Add any apps already installed on your device to kids mode for them to use
- Add any existing pictures or videos on the device to kids mode for them to see
- Ability to download additional apps from the kids store like learning apps and books
- Several other minor settings that can be changed.
The only way to exit kids mode is using the PIN you provided when setting it up, if you reboot the device when in kids mode it will boot back up into kids mode since that was the last state it was in. This said if you do type in the PIN wrong five times you will get a link that says “forgotten your PIN?” tap this link and it will redirect you to an exit page and last tap that and it will return to normal mode. The next time you open kids mode it will ask you for a new PIN. No word on if this is a bug or designed this way and some devices don’t seem to work using this method. Either way the younger children on the device will not likely go through that entire process. Since Kids Mode is targeted at young children and not Teens this will not likely be an issue.
How to Remove Kids Mode Files to Clean up Device Storage?
Kids tend to create a lot of content from Videos to voice recordings and pictures. This said they will likely start filling up the device storage rather quickly and you will want to do some cleanup. The following is step by step how to remove Kids Mode files created without messing with your own data.
- Go to your app drawer and select “My Files”
- Tap on “Device Storage” option to view your Android file structure
- Tap on the Kids Mode Folder and there you will see a folder for each Kids app installed
- Within each of these folder you can delete the files generated by the associated app
- long press any file within the folder you want to clean and it will change to multi-select mode
- Then select each file you want to remove by tapping them
- Last select the trash icon at the top of the screen and delete them
- Rinse and repeat.
If you have any additional questions about Kids Mode on the Galaxy S5 feel free to drop us a line below in the comments. Also be sure to check out the videos within this article and I tried to walk through everything in great detail to make the process as simple as possible for parents. I myself have a young daughter and another on the way which makes this a very useful feature.