Over the years, smartphones have become incredibly personal devices. From using them to simply place and receive phone calls to storing our most intimate parts of our lives. There could be a lot of things that you don’t want someone else to see and that makes the Redmi Note 7 App Lock feature quite useful to have in MIUI.
We can do a lot more with our smartphones than we ever could with older cellular/feature phones. We’re taking and receiving high-quality photos and videos these days, using shopping and banking apps with auto-login features, and storing access to this data from the cloud.
So no matter how protective you are with your smartphone. It’s becoming more difficult to share your phone with someone and not get paranoid without standing over their shoulder. Thankfully, MIUI has a feature called App Lock that can help give you some peace of mind when letting someone else use your Redmi Note 7 or Redmi Note 7 Pro.
This is a nice feature but it’s something you have to go out of your way to set up. Once you have your app(s) protected though, it’s liberating to know that you can share your phone with other people and now worry about them getting access to certain pieces of data from your smartphone.
Time needed: 4 minutes
How to Protect Your Data with App Lock on the Redmi Note 7
- Open up the Settings application
- Scroll all the way down and tap on the App Lock option
- Scroll through the apps and make sure there is a blue checkmark next to the apps you want to lock down
This UI is only like that when you open App Lock for the first time
- Tap the Set Password button at the bottom when you’re ready to continue
- Then enter a pattern to protect the selected apps
- You’ll then see a prompt about your Mi Account
So go ahead and log into one (just so you can reset this PIN/pattern/password in case you forget it)
- And tap the Add button at the bottom
- Now you will be taken to a screen that lists all of the apps which are locked and the apps which are not locked
You can go through this list and tap on the toggle next to the apps you want to lock or unlock
I am a bit on the fence as to how Xiaomi has set up this App Lock feature. I say this because the process to add/remove apps from this feature is different the first time you do it compared to any other time. I get that Xiaomi wants to walk the user through the process but I feel this is not the right way to do it.
They could have pulled off the same introductory method while keeping the UI consistent. For those with a device that has MIUI (and this feature) or who are following along with their Redmi Note 7 then you will see the difference. The introductory method is shown in the embedded video above.
It certainly isn’t the end of the world to do it this way, but it is one of the small and subtle things that I dislike about MIUI.
However, once that has been set up the next time you go into this area it’s just a list of apps with toggles next to them. The overall functionality is the same. . .but changing up the user interface is going to confuse people. I know personally, I didn’t know what was going on at first when I went back into the software to grab screenshots for this tutorial.
Changing the Redmi Note 7 Pro and Redmi Note 7 App Lock Password Options
By default, the Redmi Note 7 will ask you for a pattern when choosing how you want to lock an application. If you look toward the top (in the big green box) then you will see a link that you can tap to change the password type. However, this small link can be very easy to miss so it’s good that we can change it afterward.
You can change the password type even after you have set up all of your apps that you want to keep locked behind a PIN, pattern, or password. To do this, simply open up the Settings application again, scroll all the way down to the bottom and tap the App Lock option just like you did before.
You will be given access to this feature after you have entered you previously chosen password type. However, if you look at the top right then you should see a gear icon which will take you to the settings options for the Redmi Note 7 and Note 7 Pro App Lock feature. From here, you can change the password type to/from a PIN, pattern or password.
Not only that, but you can also tap the toggle next to the Unlock With Fingerprint option as well. This will allow you the ability to gain access to these locked apps with a simple authentication of your fingerprint. There are a number of options that you can change here to customize the feature so feel free to explore them.
Once everything is done though, trying to open up an application or game that is protected by App Lock will prompt you to enter a PIN, pattern, or password. If you have enabled the fingerprint option, then you can use your fingerprint to bypass this authentication screen and access the app if you would like as well.
