Apple Admits to Bug in Screen Time Parental Controls

Apple’s Screen Time controls are failing parents.

The company’s cloud-based Family Sharing system is designed in part for parents to remotely schedule off-limits time and restrict apps and adult content on their children’s iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch models. Trouble is, parents are finding that when they use their iPhones to set restrictions on their kids’ devices, the changes don’t stick.

“We are aware that some users may be experiencing an issue where Screen Time settings are unexpectedly reset,” an Apple spokeswoman said. “We take these reports very seriously and we have been, and will continue, making updates to improve the situation.”

Downtime, found in Settings under Screen Time, is the tool parents use to define the hours each day that a kid’s device is limited or completely unusable. But when they check the setting lately, they often see the times they scheduled have reverted to a previous setting, or they see no restrictions at all.

This can go unnoticed for days or weeks—and kids don’t always report back when they get extra time for games and social media.

Apple previously acknowledged the bug, calling it “an issue where Screen Time settings may reset or not sync across all devices.” However, the company had reported the issue fixed with iOS 16.5, which came out in May. In our testing the bug persists, even with the new public beta of iOS 17.

Broken controls, broken promise

When Apple introduced Screen Time in 2018, it held the promise of an easy fix for parents’ device-monitoring struggles—no third-party software needed to set limits, no futzing with your router to shut off the internet at night. The bug, however, is sending many parents in search of those clunky alternatives, or considering a switch to Android devices.

Tim Baker, a marketing executive in Nutley, N.J., discovered the problem late last year, after the release of iOS 16. He typically got requests from his two kids for extra time, and thought it was odd that he wasn’t hearing from them. He checked the kids’ Screen Time settings and saw the Downtime limits he had established were gone.

Baker didn’t really think his kids, ages 10 and 13, could have guessed the passcode but he changed it anyway just to be sure. The problem persisted. “Sometimes I could go for a couple of weeks and be fine and other times I had to reset things two or three times a week,” says Baker, a 25-year Apple devotee.

Baker echoes other parents, saying he relied on Apple’s Screen Time settings to keep his kids away from age-inappropriate content and put a check on time spent online.

“I want them to get their dopamine hits from other things, and I don’t want to be grabbing their phones all the time,” he says.

Enterprising kids have been known to find ways around parental controls. Baker and other parents I interviewed say their kids aren’t hacking the system.

In one Apple discussion page, more than 2,300 people indicated they were having the same problem as the person who posted about Screen Time limits not sticking. Dozens of parents have also complained about the problem on a popular private parenting and tech Facebook

Despite Apple’s stated fix for iOS 16.5, lots of parents who are running the latest software say they’re still having problems. The Baker family’s devices are all running the latest update, pushed out on Monday. Baker has already had to redo his Screen Time settings.

My editor Wilson Rothman, who oversees the Journal’s personal tech coverage, has seen the problem firsthand. He checks Downtime repeatedly when adjusting hours for his kids, to make sure the change takes hold. Now running the public beta of iOS 17 on his iPhone, he says it took three tries to change one of his children’s Downtime hours.

Imperfect alternatives

Baker says he’s looking into third-party apps to manage screen time, but has privacy concerns with non-Apple software and doesn’t want to pay for something Apple provides free.

One workaround would be to set screen limits directly on the kids’ devices, which is what I do with my kids. But it can be annoying to set multiple devices for multiple kids.

Zhurang Zhao, an engineer in San Diego, has encountered similar problems getting the controls to stick for his 16-year-old daughter. He says he contacted Apple tech support by phone three times, starting late last year.

The first two representatives he spoke to didn’t offer a fix, he said. The third suggested he factory-reset his phone then restore the apps and data from a backup. That seemed to do the trick—for a few days, then the problem returned. He finally gave up and began using Qustodio, an app that offers subscription plans starting at $54.95 a year.

While he says it works well, he adds, “I am very disappointed that I had to spend money on a third-party solution.”

Mark Rowe, a father of four and chief executive of a healthcare company near Boston, had similar trouble. He has been checking the settings closely since his kids have been out of school for the summer. When he checked the Family Sharing settings for his 15-year-old daughter Monday morning he saw that the option to limit adult websites was unchecked. 

“I would never have turned that off, and she doesn’t have my passcode,” he says.

The problems have made him wonder whether he should switch to Android devices. His kids have Chromebooks and he says he hasn’t noticed problems with Google’s Family Link parental controls.

“It’s frustrating that something that’s so simple and should work doesn’t,” Rowe says. “How much time can I spend on this every week?”

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Write to Julie Jargon at [email protected]