Tablet Kiosk Setup for a Booth

iPads have a built-in feature for exactly this: Guided Access, found under Settings > Accessibility, which restricts the device to one app and lets you disable specific hardware buttons and screen regions until a passcode is entered (Apple Support, Guided Access). For a single show, Guided Access is normally sufficient — it is quick to turn on and off per device. For a business running many kiosks across many shows, some teams instead use Single App Mode via device supervision (Apple Configurator or an MDM), which persists across reboots and disables more hardware controls, at the cost of needing device supervision to be set up first — usually only worth it once you own more than a couple of dedicated kiosk tablets.

Android tablets have a built-in equivalent called screen pinning — on stock Android, it's under Settings > Security & Privacy > More security & privacy > App Pinning, after which opening the recent-apps view and selecting the pin icon locks the device to that one app until it's unpinned (ManageEngine, Android screen pinning). Same tradeoff as iOS: fine for a single show, worth upgrading to a managed-device (COSU/kiosk) mode only once you're running several dedicated kiosk tablets long-term.

A kiosk that only the person standing directly in front of it can see is not doing the crowd-pulling job covered in trade show booth games that draw a crowd. Two placements do the real work:

• The play device (tablet or phone) at a comfortable height and angle for the person actually playing — usually a stand at counter height, angled slightly up.
• A second, larger public screen — a TV or big tablet — showing the live leaderboard or score, positioned so it is visible from the aisle, not just from the play device itself.

If budget only allows one screen, prioritize making the single device visible from a few feet away rather than optimizing purely for the player's own comfort.

The worst kiosk failure mode is a tablet sitting on a finished game's end screen with no obvious next step, while a staff member is busy with someone else. The fix is a flow that automatically returns to a fresh start screen a few seconds after a round ends — no staff tap required to reset it for the next player. Confirm this behavior specifically when testing your setup before the show, not on day one of the event.

• Run power through a cable management solution, not a loose cord across a walkway — a trip hazard is both a safety issue and a fast way to end up with a cracked screen.
• Bring a backup charging cable and a portable battery pack — a full show day of continuous use will outlast a single overnight charge on most tablets.
• Test the exact charger and cable combination before the show, not a different one you assume is compatible — a slow or incompatible charger mid-show is a solvable-in-advance, not solvable-on-the-floor problem.
• Bring a spare device if the budget allows — a single point of failure at a booth with no backup means one dropped tablet ends your capture flow for the rest of the day.

Trade show floor wifi is often congested or gated. A capture flow that queues entries locally on the tablet and syncs once a connection is available protects you from losing entries to a dead access point — a phone hotspot as backup is smart, but the flow should not require live connectivity to keep working at all. See event lead capture without badge scanners and adgamify for events for the offline-tolerant capture details.