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Polaris Express Docs

Recover a stuck kiosk with the 5-tap gesture

When a kiosked iPad or iPhone is wedged — frozen on a screen, showing a stale connectivity error, or pointing at the wrong ChargeBox — your usual remedy is to remote-deregister it from web admin. This runbook covers the fallback for when web admin can’t reach the device: a hidden on-device gesture that surfaces Settings so you can reconfigure or sign out by hand.

Prerequisites

Section titled “Prerequisites”
  • Physical access to the kiosked device.
  • The device is in Kiosk mode (chrome stripped, no toolbar, status bar hidden). If you can see the Settings gear in the toolbar, you are not in kiosk mode and should follow the normal Settings flow instead.
  • You know the device’s expected ChargeBox and connector assignment, in case you need to re-pair after sign-out.

Procedure

Section titled “Procedure”

  1. Locate the top-right corner zone

    The escape gesture lives in a 96-point square in the top-right corner of the screen, inset roughly 20 points from the top edge so it clears the iOS system-gesture strip. There is no visible affordance — the zone is the same place the Settings gear sits on an un-kiosked screen, so aim there.

  2. Tap five times in quick succession

    Tap the corner five times in a row. Each of the first four taps fires a light haptic so you know the zone is registering. Don’t pause for more than two seconds between taps — the counter resets after a pause so a stray tap during normal use can’t slowly arm the escape.

    If you feel no haptic on the first tap, you are missing the zone. Aim slightly lower and further from the very top edge, then start over.

  3. Confirm the escape with the success haptic

    On the fifth tap you’ll feel a stronger success haptic and the Settings sheet will slide up over the kiosked content. The kiosked screen stays loaded underneath — you have not signed out yet.

  4. Do what you came to do

    The sheet is the standard Settings UI. From here you can:

    • Sign out of the device (Settings → Account).
    • Re-pair to a different ChargeBox or connector.
    • Open Connectivity → Diagnostics to inspect the WebSocket state, last sync run, and recent errors.
    • Toggle feature flags if you’re chasing a known issue.

    When you’re done, swipe the sheet down to dismiss it. The device returns to kiosk chrome with no other state changed.

Verify

Section titled “Verify”
  • The haptic pattern (four light, one success) is your in-the-moment confirmation that the gesture fired.
  • After you dismiss the sheet, the device should be back in kiosk chrome — no toolbar, no status bar, no tab bar.
  • If you signed the device out or re-paired it, check the Devices section of web admin: the device’s last-seen timestamp should update within a few seconds of it reconnecting, and any pairing change will appear in the audit log.

If something goes wrong

Section titled “If something goes wrong”

Audit and reversibility

Section titled “Audit and reversibility”
  • The gesture itself is not audited — it only opens a local sheet and changes no server state.
  • Any action you take inside Settings (sign-out, re-pair, flag toggles) is audited the same way it would be from a non-kiosked device. Check the audit log for the device’s Public ID to confirm.
  • The gesture leaves no persistent state on the device. Dismissing the sheet returns the device to its previous kiosked screen.
Section titled “Related”