On iOS you can also disable specific actions and even select areas of the screen you want to disable touchscreen usage over.
I do wonder if part of the issue though is that we have thousands of these 'great' features, so discovery is poor because people can't possibly know about them all. 'great' features lost in a sea of other 'great' features.
You think if they couldn't even be arsed to google the name, that they'd google to find out their idea has already existed for years?
Nice. Unfortunately, GA does not seem to work with Apple Wallet at all.
You can also configure the action button to enable Guided Access as well depending on what phone you have.
I don't have that one (iPhone 15 Pro). When triple tapping in Wallet, I get an overlay "guided access cannot be opened when multiple apps are active".
The scenario would be e.g. at a concert entrance queue where there is a nonzero risk of someone snatching the unlocked phone out of my hands.
The feature is buried a bit. I believe this is because it's more of a best-effort protection. The settings page itself says:
"When an app is pinned, the pinned app may open other apps and personal data may be accessible. If you want to securely share your device with someone, try using a guest user instead."
That way no other applications are available to open, accidentally or otherwise.
I tested it and it blocks opening other apps when pinned. Maybe blocking app opening doesn't work for apps using some older system APIs.
To give a couple of examples, using this would be a bit like locking the glove box in front of traffic cops, or going around the house locking rooms when you have a guest.
The only way to make it socially acceptable would be to make it some sort of default (for example, requiring face id when switching apps, with pin/fingerprint as a backup), which will probably be an option as the lag and failure rate of face id or other owner-detection technologies improve.
That's a good point. Doing this basically says "I distrust you", which you probably don't want to say. (At least I don't.)
If the worry is that the cop you hand your phone to will take more access than you want, then attempting to limit that access is probably not going to work out the way you want.
A more effective solution would be better legal protections.
Edit: I am now an iOS user since 2022, and I only learn about "Guided Access" from other comments haha
I don't know about America but in the UK, if you can't provide proof immediately the officer will give you a "producer", which is a legal notice requiring you to provide the evidence at a police station within some time limit (typically a week or two).
Edited to add: I'd guess this is less common these days because the British police have access to a database of motor insurance anyway.
iOS already has this, it's called Guided Access and you can access it by triple-pressing the power button... it even lets you set up areas of the screen that can't be pressed.
Here's the problem. By being abusable, it falsly normalises a level of trust. I.e. it deceives the user into trusting it.
Not just because of the privacy aspects, but what if you're already using your phone to record the interaction?