Way to temporarily disable touchscreen on Windows 10 tablet?

Factual Questions
1

My sister has a cheap tablet running Windows 10 that she wants be able to give to her three year old on longer car trips, allowing her to watch a movie. She doesn’t want her to be able to turn it off or switch apps and consequently start screaming for someone to fix it. We were able to do something like this on the iPhone, were you could hold the home button to lock the current app with limited functionality, so the child could use the app but couldn’t do anything else until you unlocked it.

However, all of my searches are only turning up ways to completely disable the touchscreen and seem to be geared towards set ups that also have a keyboard/mouse input.

She’s going to be making a lot of solo trips with the kid in the next few weeks and it would nice to be able to focus on driving rather than child wrangling, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

2

I don’t know which version of Windows 10 it runs, but you might be able to upgrade it to Pro and use Kiosk mode to force a single app to run in full screen:

3

She’s running Home and I don’t know if she’d want to upgrade just for this, but thanks for the suggestion, and I’ll pass it on.

I thought I’d found a video app that might fit the bill but it was specifically for 4K and wouldn’t download because she didn’t have the right hardware.

4

I’ve used this method before.

5

Couldn’t she disable the touchscreen and use a Bluetooth mouse to control it? After the movie playback is started, she could turn off the mouse.

6

What about putting it in some sort of clear case or sleeve that won’t transmit touch?

7

Thanks for the replies.

Scr4, I don’t know if she’d be willing to purchase (and keep track of) a bluetooth mouse just for this, but I’ll see if a family member has one laying around that she could use. She got spoiled by the “guided access” on the iPhone and how easy it was to use with the kid.

SmellMyWort, I like the idea of the screen cover. She already has a case, so fitting it with an additional layer of plastic that wouldn’t transmit shouldn’t be too hard.

Appreciate the suggestions.

8

Well, I’ve learnt something today. We sometimes let our youngest watch TV programs on our iPhones, but he tends to touch the screen and end up exiting the app or otherwise messing it up. I was thinking just the other day “I wish there was some way to disable the touchscreen”, and there it is! I had never heard of the Guided Access feature. :smack: