Whenever my little niece visits me, she takes my Android smartphone from my pocket and starts playing games like Temple Run, Subway Surfers and Danger Dash. Although I really enjoy to see her play the games and score much better than me, but I am always worried what if she messes with my work emails, deletes files from cloud storage or calls international numbers by accident. Even though Android provides password protecting the phone, but that does not work if you want someone to use only some apps and not the others. Fortunately, the free avast! Mobile Security for Android allows you to lock any app in your Android smartphone with a PIN number, password or gesture. This way whenever someone launches the protected apps, they will have to supply a password, PIN or gesture before they can access it.
Here is how you can lock almost any app installed in your Android smartphone using the free avast! Mobile Security (which can be installed from Google Play Store for free – the link is at the bottom of this post):
- First of all you have to install avast! Mobile Security, if you have not already done so. It is a great idea to update it and let it scan your Android phone for any possible security threats.
- Once you are in the clear, you can launch the avast! Mobile Security from its home screen icon. It will show all the modules like Virus Scanner, Anti-Theft, Backup and so on. You have to select Application Locking from the main screen.
- It will show you a list of all the apps installed on your Android device. You have to select any apps that you want to password protect. Just place a checkmark in the box next to these.
- avast! will prompt you for a PIN number. If you have not set a PIN number, then you will have to set one now. This PIN will be asked when changing avast! settings and when launching a protected app. If you do not want to use a PIN number, then you can choose to use text based password or a gesture password from the Application Locking settings.
- That’s it. Now try launching a password protected app and avast! will ask you for the PIN (or password or gesture) to unlock the app before you can use it. In the following screenshot, avast! is asking for the PIN when I tried to launch Firefox.
avast! Mobile Security has tons of features and Application Locking is one of the most useful one. You can lock any app from inadvertent use by strangers by locking it with a password with the help of avast! Mobile Security.
You can download avast! Mobile Security from: http://www.avast.com/free-mobile-security.