A shared family tablet: keeping your own things your own

The tablet lives on the kitchen counter. Your child watches videos on it, your partner reads the news, and last week you used it to check a medical letter. A notification slid in from your own account while someone else was holding it.

A shared device mixes things in a way a personal phone doesn’t. The fix is less about locking the tablet down and more about keeping your own things from landing on it in the first place.

What to do now

Give everyone their own profile, if the tablet allows it. On many Android tablets you can add users, a guest, a restricted profile or a child profile. Each one has its own apps, storage and settings, and files and messages aren’t shared between them. Look under Settings, System, Multiple users. A guest profile can be wiped when the visitor is done. Not every tablet supports this, and menus differ by maker.

If the tablet has no profiles, be careful what you sign in to. Anything you sign in to becomes reachable by whoever picks it up:

• Sign out of your personal email, cloud and messaging accounts when you finish, or don’t sign in at all on this device.
• Turn off photo sync for your account on the tablet, so your camera photos stop arriving there.
• Don’t let the browser save passwords for accounts that are only yours.

Turn off lock-screen previews. Messages that show their text on the lock screen are read by anyone nearby. Show only that a message arrived.

Use a single-app mode for guests and children. Guided access on iPad and iPhone, and app pinning on Android, keep someone in one app. See showing one photo without them scrolling and a child playing games on your phone.

Check what else can see your photos. Our guide on which apps can see your photos shows how to review access.

Check where files land. Downloads, screenshots and photos taken with the tablet’s camera go to its shared storage. Move anything private somewhere else, then delete it from the tablet.

Agree on house rules. A short, friendly rule such as “the tablet is for everyone, so we keep personal things off it” does more than any setting. Revisit it when someone new starts using the tablet, such as a visiting relative or a child who has just learned to read.

Do a quick check once in a while. Open the gallery, the downloads folder and the list of signed-in accounts as if you were a stranger. If you see something you wouldn’t want seen, move it.

What doesn’t help

• A tablet PIN everyone knows. It keeps strangers out, not family.
• Renaming a folder to something boring. Anyone who browses finds it.
• Assuming it’s fine because nobody has looked. Previews, suggestions and recent files show things without anyone searching.
• Deleting a file from the gallery and thinking it’s gone. Check the deleted folder too.

Where a vault helps

If you can’t give yourself a profile, Silo gives you a small private space inside the shared device. Photos, videos and, on Pro, files of any kind are encrypted on the tablet and open only with your own PIN, passphrase or face or fingerprint unlock. Silo locks at once when the screen turns off, and you can hide its contents in the app switcher and block screenshots. The result is that someone using the tablet sees a lock screen, not your things.

It works best if you import into Silo and then remove the originals from the shared gallery, once Silo has checked that each item copied correctly. Silo is free for up to 100 photos and 10 videos.