Cyanogen, Keeping Your Nexus Child Friendly

It's no secret that I'm a big supporter of CyanogenMod. I recently got my hands on a Nexus 4 finally after nearly two months of waiting since initial launch, so that gave the XDA community a good head start before I could gorge on it's tasty mods.

I discovered a great feature within CyanogenMod that really makes my phone a great child friendly gaming device. It may not be a feature fresh off the presses, but with my new 9 month old son, I've found a great use for.

Expanding Desktop

As I said earlier, this isn't a new feature, it's just one that I have great use for now with my new son.

Before you can use this feature, you first have to enable it. This can be a little tricky if you don't know where it is, so I'll show it here.

First go to Settings > System, then click on the "Power menu" option.

Then check "Expanded Desktop".

Now you can Hold your Power Button and select "Expanded desktop".

Below is a picture of your standard looking desktop. 

Below here is what it looks like after you've "Expanded the desktop"

Notice the bottom buttons are gone as well as the status bar at the top. Let's say you launch Angry Birds for your son or daughter. If you expand your desktop like this, your child will not be able to exit the application with these onscreen buttons.  Note: to return back to normal mode, just repeat the steps of holding power and selecting "Expanded Desktop".

This was a great feature for me as I'd turn away for just a moment to find out my son Alex had just dialed a number from my contact list just by touching random spots on the screen. No more accidental calls or texts or your child asking you to put his/her game back on again.

It may not seem like the most thrilling feature to some of you, but for me this is a life saver with my son.