Stop iPad game distractions at school

Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do to prevent your child playing games on their iPad at school.  Hopefully the school will have restrictions in place and your child abides by them. 

The perfect solution would be an app that allows you to lock a folder full of apps.  Then you could have the passcode and only unlock that games folder when your child is home.  However, the apps that allow that feature are only available to you if you jailbreak your iPad.   

  

I don’t recommend jailbreaking your iPad because it terminates your warranty, and also opens the iPad, and your child, to security issues and apps that you might not want them accessing.  Jailbreaking is a technical process, and not for the novice; each time there’s a software update you’ll need to re-jailbreak the device, and there is also the risk of permanent damage being done to the device.

So, what can you do to make sure that their games aren’t distracting your child every time they open their iPad?

Turn off notifications

Turn off notifications on the games your child plays, so they won’t be distracted by announcements of approaching tournaments, new levels or prizes they can collect in their favourite games.

• To see what Notifications are appearing on the iPad, swipe down from the top of the screen.

To turn off Notifications:

1. Go to Settings

2. Select Notifications

3. From the list of apps that appears on the right of the screen, you’ll need to select each of the games individually to access their Notification settings

4. Swipe next to Allow Notifications to turn off all notifications for each game/app.

• Be careful which apps you switch off notifications for – they might need their calendar or reminder app notifications!

FYI, this is where you can choose how and where you receive notifications from apps; you can choose where on the screen they appear and whether there is a sound notification as well.