Removing Your App Restrictions

Our app libraries are growing year on year as the number of useful programs continue to grow and our habits and styles change to accommodate the need for  these changing apps, but as we download more we start to realise many of the restrictions that come with them whether this be a region lock, a paywall, online regulation, or any number of other methods chosen by the developers to gate some content in some way – fortunately, for as many ways as there are to restrict parts of an app there are also ways to get around them – so what options are available to you?

(Image from ios.gadgethacks.com)

1. Beating the paywall – The first big hurdle for many may be the initial cost or an ongoing subscription cost to unlock certain features or to access a ‘premium’ version of an app, and for some it may be difficult to justify the cost of doing so even if that cost is small – but there are legitimate ways to get these apps for free primarily through online surveys – the most popular is through Google’s Opinion Rewards which have you spend a few minutes per day answering some questions largely around how you use the apps you have for example, and completion of the survey will give a small amount into your app store wallet, over time this builds up and gives you enough to purchase or subscribe to some of the apps you’re using – a few minutes per day to save a little seems like a good trade off for many.
2. Region restrictions – If you’re an avid user of streaming services such as Netflix, you’ll be all too aware of many of the region specific content that may be available – you may have heard your favourite movie or show is available on the service only to find that it is locked to the US version of the app, for example. It’s very widely known at this point, but VPN’s serve as a great solution to this problem that only seems to be growing as many different apps and services have started including this artificial block into many features that should be available – with them becoming so popular too there are plenty of discounts and deals available for new users if you’re looking to get the best bang for your buck, as well as a huge number of competitors keeping costs down.
3. Changing regulation – With mobile development coming so quickly it’s tough for regulation to keep up and tends to be more reactive than proactive, this has most recently been seen especially in mobile gaming as recent changes have come through for online betting and gambling – one of which was a recent ban on online credit card betting, but launches of initiatives such as Gamstop have also come around which aims to limit accessibility for problem gamblers, fortunately a growing number of sites don’t register to the scheme and many can be found at Max Casinos giving players a way to avoid many of the blocks that are starting to appear in mobile gaming.