How to Disable Installing Apps on Your iPhone or iPad

This brief tutorial will show you how to stop people from being able to install Apps on their iPhones (or iPad/iPod Touch). Following the steps outlined below will allow you to control exactly which Apps are installed on an iPhone. Yes, this tutorial could also be called “how to stop my kids from installing Apps on their and/or my iPhone”.

There are a number of circumstances where you may want to disable the ability for someone (your child perhaps?) from being able to download and install Apps on their iPhones. These steps will disable the App Store on an iPhone so that Apps cannot be purchased or even installed, even through iTunes.
1. Start by tapping the Settings button.
2. Scroll down to the General entry and tap it.
3. Scroll down to the Restrictions entry and tap it.
4. Tap Enable Restrictions.
5. You’ll be prompted to set up a 4 digit PIN. Make this passcode hard to guess (ie. not 0000, the last 4 digits of your phone number etc). Also, make sure to remember the passcode. You won’t be able to revert any of these changes or recover the passcode if you forget it. After you’ve entered the PIN once, you’ll need to enter it a second time to confirm.
6. Change the ‘slider’ next to Installing Apps from ON to OFF.
7. Confirm that Installing Apps is set to OFF.
8. That’s it! The App Store on your iPhone (or iPad or iPod Touch) will now be disabled, and unless the above settings are changed back you won’t be able to install Apps on the iPhone.