Apple Screen Time

“Apple has a great tool called ScreenTime that I can set limits on”

“Works well and keeps me in check.”

“Screen Time has had many improvements recently; I'd suggest giving it another shot with iOS 27.”

“That’s odd as I do that quite successfully with my kids.”

“It has never worked for us at anything like 100%, it is hit or miss and frequently just does randomly stupid things.”

“Apple's attempt at actually managing screen time and device access is mostly theater”

“This is something that Apple really got right.”

“in practice it almost never works : it doesn’t lock, gets broken whenever you upgrade the os”

“the password on a child's device can often be removed by simply turning off the screentime password”

“We had to turn it off because it was too frustrating for everyone involve.”

“it’s extraordinarily brittle, to such an extent that it’s virtually useless”

“This is a garbage UI and it looks like it was designed using "dark patterns" to ensure that nobody uses it.”

“the parental controls have all kinds of weird issues like, you give them 15 minutes of WhatsApp daily”

“Yeah I bailed out of this when it asked me to change my 8 digit passcode to a 4 to 6 digit passcode”

“Apple's restrictions are a joke.”

“the on-device Apple system just enables the existing parental controls by default”

“They are both very bad at things like my kids listening to Spotify with the screen off.”

“It breaks constantly. It fails to notify me of all kinds of events that should work, but spontaneously fail to.”

“Let’s not pretend Apple screen time is any good. My 13yo daughter figured out multiple ways around it by herself”

“Doom scroll all you want in 2 mins then it’s locked for the day.”

“Their screentime settings also work in the browser. It could be better, but at least it's something”

“What happens when Screen Time fails and the whitelist of allowed sites and limits on time no longer work”

“doesn't provide a way to disable mobile data or Personal Hotspot as part of Screen Time settings”

“Our kid breaks through the screen time regularly, even with new passcodes.”

“The UX is terrible and there are features missing that seem extremely basic and fundamental.”

“it's still a joke, is incredibly Byzantine, and limits your options as a parent”

“Apple's parental controls fail closed in inscrutable and impossible to debug ways.”

“When everything is turned off by default, iOS Screentime is very effective.”

“iOS screen time controls are so buggy that eventually parents throw up their hands in exasperation”

“unable to keep Screen Time compatible across the latest minor iOS versions”

“Screen Time Parental Controls literally do not work, at all, just completely unusable and broken”

“On iPhones it's super easy to set up rules like these, using the screen time manager”

“I’m continually impressed by my 12 year old son’s ability to get around those restrictions.”

“how easy it is for my 13yo daughter to get around screen time restrictions on iOS”

“I've found it to be quite robust in managing my kids' access to the internet.”

“some of the most obtuse and frustrating features I've had to navigate on their devices”

“because you can set limits in one place.”

“The restrictions were so full of holes that they didn't really work as anything other than a speedbump.”

“Found out last year that simply deleting an app and reinstalling it will reset time limits.”

“iPhones have excellent parental controls (by the abysmal standards of consumer software more broadly).”