Lock Individual iPhone Apps & App Switcher Tray With Icon Passcode
Lending your iPhone to a colleague for a round of Fruit Ninja might not be much of an issue for the most part, but you don’t want them to be able to access your private texts and photos. Putting a passcode lock on the entire phone is certainly not gong to do any good in this scenario, since you need something that can password-protect individual apps while leaving the rest of the device accessible. For obvious reasons, you won’t find such an app in the App Store, but Cydia has some pretty good options for this purpose. Personally, I use a Cydia tweak called AppLocker, which is quite comprehensive and has options for locking both apps and folders. However, it costs $0.99 and takes some time to configure. Icon Passcode, on the other hand, couldn’t be simpler. This free tweak can be used to put a four-digit passcode not only on apps, but also on the App Switcher tray, which sets it apart from its competitors.
Icon Passcode takes everything into account and provides you with a security solution that is actually useful. Don’t forget to lock Cydia, so that no one can but you can uninstall the tweak from your device. Icon Passcode can be set up from within the stock Settings app. The menu itself is passcode-protected.
You will be asked to enter a passcode when you enter the tweak’s settings menu for the first time. The next step is to specify whether you want to lock the App Switcher tray. To select the apps for locking, enter the menu marked ‘Locked Applications’. All system and third-party apps are listed here, with toggles in front of each. Setting an app to ‘on’ locks it with the password you just set. To change the passcode, go back to the Icon Passcode menu in the Settings app and hit the ‘Change Passcode’ button.
The tweak uses the same passcode entry interface that you see on the lock screen, and doesn’t seem to add any noticeable lag to the launching of locked apps.
Icon Passcode might not be the most feature-rich Cydia tweak of its kind, but it is one of the best free solutions out there. It does what it says, and while it doesn’t allow locking folders, it compensates with the additional option of passcode-protecting the App Switcher tray.
The tweak is available free of cost in Cydia’s ModMyi repository.
