Article

Apple's automatic sleep feature raises concern for some kiosk users

An automatic sleep feature in Apple's recently released iOS 12 has caused issues for some users, including those with iPads running kiosk software.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston was able to keep its iPad from going dark with a new software version. Photo courtesy of the museum.

November 14, 2018 by Elliot Maras — Editor, Kiosk Marketplace & Vending Times

An automatic sleep feature in Apple's recently released iOS 12 has caused issues for some users, including those with iPads running kiosk software.

Some kiosk software providers, including Kiosk Group Inc., have advised customers not to use iOS 12 until Apple has addressed the issue of screens that use the Guided Access feature going to sleep after 20 minutes. Issues have been reported on Apple discussion boards since the operating system update was released in September.

An informational iPad at The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston went blank for a week-and-a-half in late October, Chelsea Shannon, senior specialist of interpretation at the museum, told Kiosk Marketplace. The museum was able to fix the problem with a solution from Flowvella, the provider of the museum's kiosk app. Flowvella suggested a workaround that involved playing a looping video on the home screen.

The solution took a few days to create because the application was not designed to show a video on the home screen, Shannon said. "We had to figure out how to make that work in terms of the design of it," she said. "Now that we have it in place, it looks fine. It just took us a little while to figure out how to make it work."

Flowvella CEO Brent Brookler said that numerous people using iOS 12 have encountered issues with Apple's Guided Access feature, and people on discussion boards have advised others either to avoid turning on Guided Access or to revert to iOS 11.2. Guided Access, which locks the screen on a specific app, can be helpful in a number of situations.

Users advised to wait

Kiosk Group Inc, provider of the Kiosk Pro app for iPads, has posted a notice on its website saying that the company has received several reports of the app going to sleep regardless of the settings.

The company recommends that Kiosk Pro users delay updating the iOS for public kiosks or use Single App mode in the updated version rather than Guided Access. Single App operates similarly to Guided Access, the notice said, but has differences that make it a preferable choice for certain kiosk projects.

Apple, in response to a request to comment, pointed to a notice on the Kiosk Pro website that confirms Apple has addressed the issue in its beta of iOS 12.1.1. According to the Kiosk Pro notice, the most recent developer beta of iOS 12.1.1 includes a new "Mirror Display Auto-Lock" setting under Guided Access. When the new setting is turned on, Guided Access will obey the auto-lock setting, allowing the screen to remain on indefinitely, the notice said.

Kiosk Group is hoping that the setting will be available in the near future as part of Apple's 12.1.1 public release.

"Since 'point' releases generally only have a few betas, it's likely that this will be released to the public in the near future," Becca Rice, director of software development at Kiosk Group, told Kiosk Marketplace in an email.

"Since Guided Access is so easy to set up, it has been adopted by many kiosk projects, but to be fair to Apple, it has always been primarily designed and presented as an accessibility feature for personal use," Rice said. "In this type of use case, the user would almost always have access to the home button, which turns on the screen again with a single tap."

Apple does provide dedicated options for kiosk deployments and other scenarios where a device is purposed for a single app/task, Rice said, specifically Single App mode and Autonomous Single App mode.

"While these modes require that the device be supervised and synced with [a mobile device management] solution or a Mac, they are often a better choice for unsupervised deployments as they are specifically designed for this type of use case," Rice said.

Improvement sought for speech aid use

Alisa Smith, quality assurance director at Audioeye, a provider of digital access solutions, told Kiosk Marketplace that Apple made changes in iOS 12 to address issues people were having with iOS 11.

According to an October discussion on an Apple discussion website, the automatic sleep function stopped working under an OS update, which limited the use of the speech device to avoid draining the battery.

Smith said that Guided Access allowed augmentative and alternative communication devices to keep the user focused on the speech tool, but that some were encountering problems in iOS 11.

"Guided Access was causing the iPad not to go to sleep," Smith said. "Their iPad was running out of battery around three times faster than normal."

The company made changes in iOS 12 that allowed the iPad to go to sleep during Guided Access, Smith said.

"The people who were using this for their child (as a speech tool) wanted it to shut off automatically because it was saving battery," she said. "In order to assist with this issue, Apple had the screen shut off by default."

Following this change, people using iOS for applications other than speech were finding that the screen was going to sleep because they were using Guided Access, Smith said. People operating iPads as kiosks in some situations found Guided Access helpful as a way to prevent users from accessing certain functions, she said.

About Elliot Maras

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Elliot Maras is the editor of Kiosk Marketplace and Vending Times. He brings three decades covering unattended retail and commercial foodservice.