How to Set Up Android Guest Mode (and Why Samsung Lacks It)

Guest Mode on Android lets you hand your phone to someone else without exposing your messages, photos, or signed-in accounts. It spins up a temporary profile, walls off your data, then wipes the session once the guest is done. Stock Android has carried the feature since 2014. Samsung, the brand that sells more Android phones than anyone, does not include it.

That gap matters more than it first sounds. Samsung shipped roughly 65.4 million phones in the first quarter of this year, ahead of every other vendor, which means the most popular flavor of Android arrives without one of the platform’s handiest privacy tools. Galaxy owners get a set of substitutes instead, and none of them behaves quite the same way.

What Guest Mode Does When You Hand Over Your Phone

Think of the feature as a clean, empty copy of your phone. The guest gets a fresh home screen, the default apps, and nothing else. Your inbox, your gallery, your banking app, and your chat history stay behind a wall they cannot cross.

Android enforces that wall at the system level, not with a flimsy app lock. The Android Open Source Project (AOSP, the code base every Android phone is built on) spells out the rule plainly.

No user has access to the app data of another user.

That line, from the Android multi-user developer documentation, is the whole point. A guest counts as a separate user, so their session is sandboxed away from yours. There can only be one guest at a time, and by default the phone deletes the entire session when the guest signs out, so nothing they typed, browsed, or downloaded sticks around.

Setting Up Guest Mode in a Few Taps

On a phone running close-to-stock Android, like a Google Pixel, setup takes under a minute, and the feature has survived even as Google keeps reshaping the platform across releases such as the Android 17 update roadmap. The controls live inside system settings rather than the lock screen, which is why plenty of people never stumble across them.

1. Open Settings, scroll down to System, then tap Users.
2. Make sure the “Allow user switch” toggle is turned on.
3. Tap “Add guest” to create the temporary profile.
4. Set the guest options you want: automatically delete guest activity on exit, allow phone calls, and whether guests can be added from the lock screen.
5. To switch fast later, drag the notification shade down with two fingers, tap the user icon near the settings cog, and choose Guest.
6. To leave, pull the shade down again, tap “Exit guest mode,” and confirm.

The exit step is deliberately one-way. A guest cannot quietly slip back into your profile, because leaving guest mode drops them at your lock screen, where they need your PIN, pattern, or fingerprint to go any further.

Why Samsung Galaxy Owners Cannot Find It

Open the Users menu on a Galaxy phone and there is nothing there. Samsung pulled multi-user support out of its phone software years ago and has never shipped it on phones since, even though the underlying Android feature has existed since version 5.0 Lollipop. It briefly surfaced in an early beta of One UI 5, Samsung’s software layer that sits on top of Android, before the company removed it ahead of the public release.

Samsung has never given a clear reason for the omission. The capability still works on Galaxy tablets, which makes its absence on phones harder to explain. And this is not a niche corner of the market: Samsung held about 22 percent of global smartphone shipments in the first quarter of this year according to research firm Omdia, enough to rank first worldwide. The longer arc shows up in the quarterly Samsung smartphone market-share data, which has kept the company at or near the top for years.

So the largest single group of Android users is the one group locked out of one of Android’s simplest privacy tools. It fits a wider pattern in how Samsung curates its software, keeping a tight grip on which stock features survive the jump into One UI, a tendency visible across Samsung’s handling of flagship privacy features.

The Workarounds Samsung Built Instead

Samsung’s answer is not one feature but a few, each solving a slightly different problem. The closest match arrived with Maintenance Mode, introduced for Galaxy phones running One UI 5 and later.

It does roughly what Guest Mode does, but it was built for the repair counter rather than the dinner table. Turning it on creates a separate account with no access to your photos, messages, contacts, or accounts, so a technician can test the hardware without seeing your life. It needs a little free storage to set up: about 1.5GB on a 64GB phone, or 500MB on larger models. Samsung lays out the process on its Galaxy maintenance mode support guide, and explained the privacy thinking when it first announced the data-hiding tool.

Secure Folder runs the logic in reverse. Built on the Samsung Knox security platform, it is an encrypted container where you tuck away your own private apps and files, then lock it behind a separate code. It hides your sensitive stuff rather than handing a guest a clean slate, so it is better for keeping prying eyes off specific apps than for lending out the whole phone.

Here is how the main sharing and privacy options line up.

App Pinning Works on Almost Any Android

If you own a Galaxy and want the fastest way to hand off your phone safely, app pinning is it. The feature locks the screen to one app at a time, and getting out requires your PIN, pattern, or fingerprint. It ships on nearly every modern Android phone, Samsung included, so it is the one universal fallback. Google’s own steps are short, and you can confirm them on the Android screen pinning help page. In practice it is useful for more than lending:

• Letting a friend make a single call or look up one thing without roaming your other apps.
• Handing a child a game or video without them tapping into settings or messages.
• Showing a photo or document to someone without them swiping through your whole gallery.

There is a catch. App pinning locks the screen but does not create a separate account, so it guards against casual wandering without giving the full data isolation a guest profile does. Until Samsung says why Guest Mode never made the cut on its phones, pinning a single app and keeping the device in sight is the closest a Galaxy owner gets.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Samsung Have Guest Mode?

No. Samsung removed multi-user and guest support from its Galaxy phone software and has not brought it back, even though the feature exists in standard Android and still works on Galaxy tablets. Galaxy phone owners rely on Maintenance Mode, Secure Folder, or app pinning instead.

Is Guest Mode the Same as Adding a Second User Profile?

Not quite. A second user profile is permanent and keeps its own apps, settings, and data between sessions, like a separate phone. A guest is a temporary user that the phone can erase automatically as soon as the session ends.

Does Guest Mode Delete Everything the Guest Did?

By default, yes. Android does not keep guest session data once the guest exits, so browsing history, downloads, and anything typed during the session are wiped. You can change this behavior in the Users settings if you want a guest session to persist.

Can a Guest See My Photos, Messages, or Apps?

No. Android isolates each user’s app data at the system level, so a guest cannot reach your gallery, inbox, or signed-in accounts. They only see the default apps and whatever they add during their own session.

How Do I Leave Guest Mode on Android?

Pull down the notification shade and tap Exit guest mode, then confirm. You land on your own lock screen and need your PIN, pattern, or fingerprint to get back in, so a guest cannot sneak back into your profile.

What Is the Best Privacy Option for a Samsung Galaxy Phone?

For a quick handoff, app pinning is the simplest choice since it works on Galaxy phones and locks the screen to one app. For repairs, Maintenance Mode hides your data, and Secure Folder is best for keeping specific apps private on your own device.