Sharing your smartphone with others for a prolonged period of time is quite unthinkable. But its becoming increasingly common. The kids want to play Angry birds, the husband wants to use it when his phone is charging and your friends also probably borrow it now and again, much to your annoyance. You obviously carry a lot of personal photos and notes on your phone and won’t appreciate others meddling with things they have no right to peek into.
If you have an Android Lollipop device, you can now create different user accounts so that different users can make use of such profiles the next time they use your smartphone. In this post, we will discuss the various user accounts in Android Lollipop 5.0 and how you can create them.
Multiple User Accounts in Android Lollipop 5.0
Android Lollipop 5.0 on smartphones lets you create two different types of user accounts.
- Guest account: A guest account lets you give temporary access of your device to another person. Guest users cannot access your personal settings such as your email, contacts and such. Once the guest session is over, you need to switch access to another user. The data transacted in a Guest mode session is only stored temporarily. Once you switch away from Guest mode and try to reconnect again, you can choose to continue from the last guest session or start a new session.
- User account: A user account provides complete access to all the features and apps on the device. A user can customize and configure the phone to change the appearance of the home screen for that particular account. However, changes made to the Settings will affect all user accounts. A user can also update apps for all other users as well.
How to Setup User Accounts in Android Lollipop 5.0
1. Open up your Android Lollipop 5.0 device and go to Settings.
2. On the Settings page, scroll down and in the Device section, select Users.
3. You will notice that you are marked as the owner of the device and you have options to enable the Guest session and add a new user.
Create User Accounts in Android
- Tap the Cog icon next to Guest and toggle OFF Allow phone calls if you don’t want your guest to make calls on your device.
- Tap Add user to create a new user account. You will see a pop up asking you to confirm if you want to add a new user. Click OK. Then tap Set Up Now. You can now hand over the device to the new user to configure their home page. The new user can add his or her Gmail account, add a profile, and confirm Google Services. Then the Home screen is available for customization. Apps can be added, wallpapers changed and so on.
Switching Between User Accounts in Android Lollipop
1. Swipe down to view the Notification Center. At the top right corner of the screen, you’ll notice a user account icon. Tap the icon.
2. This will open up the Quick Access Settings. Tap the profile icon again to display the User page. Tap on your User profile to switch between accounts.
Deleting User Accounts in Android Lollipop
To delete a user account:
1. Open up your Android Lollipop 5.0 device and go to Settings.
2. On the Settings page, scroll down and in the Device section, select Users.
3. Tap the user account you want to delete.
4. In the next screen, tap Remove user.
5. Tap Delete to confirm the deletion. This will delete all apps and data of the user.
Creating User Accounts in Android Lollipop on Smartphones – Defects
Creating user accounts on Android tablets varies slightly from that on smartphones. On smartphone devices, you have no options to restrict users from using specific apps. So if you were indeed handing over your phone to a friend or your kids, you have no options to restrict usage of specific apps on the phone.
If you were hoping to exercise some sort of parental controls over the smartphone running Android Lollipop, you will be disappointed. I noticed that other users, guest or otherwise could freely access the photos from your account as well.
One hopes that future updates offers more control over user accounts in Android Lollipop devices.
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