Guided Access only locks one app. Here's the way around it.
You set up Guided Access, it worked beautifully, and then your child wanted to switch from the drawing app to a game — and you discovered there's no way to allow both. This isn't a setting you've missed. Guided Access is single-app by design, and it's worth understanding why before looking at what to use instead.
Why it's one app and always will be
Guided Access is an Accessibility feature, not a parental-control one. It was built so someone with a cognitive or motor difficulty could use a single app without accidentally leaving it — that's also why it lets you grey out regions of the screen and disable hardware buttons. Multi-app switching would defeat its own purpose. Apple has kept it deliberately narrow, and no amount of digging through Settings will find a multi-app option, because there isn't one.
What Screen Time does instead
Screen Time can restrict by category and by time budget, which sounds close but behaves differently. It's built around a device the child owns and uses all day, so it thinks in hours per app and schedules. You can approximate an allow-list by blocking categories, but it's slow to set up, slow to undo, and it applies to your own use of the phone afterward unless you remember to reverse it.
The Family Controls route
In iOS 16 Apple opened the Screen Time machinery to third-party developers as the Family Controls framework. It's the same shielding the system uses, and it can do the thing Guided Access won't: shield every app except a set you choose. Apps built on it can offer a start/stop mode with an allow-list, which is exactly the multi-app version of Guided Access people are looking for.
What that looks like in practice
In Reef you tick the apps that stay usable, then hit Start. Everything you didn't tick is shielded — the icon stays on the Home Screen but it won't open — and your child also gets a hub of built-in games and any kid-safe websites you added. Getting out needs Face ID, Touch ID or a PIN, and the shield holds through a force-quit or a restart. Different children can have different lists.
Which to use when
Keep Guided Access for the genuinely single-app cases: one video, one drawing app, handing your phone to a toddler for ten minutes. It's free, instant, and needs nothing installed. Reach for an allow-list app when the handover is longer, when more than one app needs to work, or when you want the same setup to be one tap next time rather than a fresh configuration.
FAQ
Can Guided Access allow two apps?
No. It locks the device to the app that is open when you start it, and there is no setting to add a second. This is intentional — it's an Accessibility feature designed to keep someone inside one app.
Is there a Guided Access alternative that allows several apps?
Yes, apps built on Apple's Family Controls framework. They shield every app except the ones you allow, so you can permit several at once. Reef is one, and is free to download.
Does Guided Access stop in-app purchases?
Only indirectly — it stops the user leaving the app, but purchases inside that app still work. To stop spending, turn off In-app Purchases in Settings › Screen Time › Content & Privacy Restrictions.
Can a child get out of Guided Access?
Not without your passcode or Face ID. But it does end on a device restart, and a determined child will eventually try holding the buttons. A Family Controls shield persists through restarts.
Hand over the phone, not the whole phone
Reef shields every app you didn't allow, gives your child a hub of the games and sites you chose, and needs your Face ID to switch off. Free to download — the shield, the PIN and passcode recovery are never paywalled.
Get Reef on the App StoreAbout ReefiOS behaviour described here was checked against iOS 26. Apple moves settings between releases — if a path doesn't match what you see, the feature is usually still there under a nearby name.