Apple confirms parental control issues on iPhone and iPad

Apple confirmed Screen Time issues that cause parental controls on iPhone and iPad to not always work correctly. Because of this, in some situations, children can use the device longer than their parents wanted.

Screen Time allows parents to track app usage on their child's device. The function allows you to set restrictions on the use of specific programs, as well as completely prohibit access at certain hours.

Due to a bug, the function works with errors: after changing the settings by a parent, they are not always correctly applied to children's devices. As a result, in some cases, the child's iPhone or iPad continues to use the old schedule even though the parent displays the new one.

To make sure that everything is set up correctly, the parent will have to track the child's activity data and compare it with the schedule, or set up restrictions right on the child's device.

By data The Wall Street Journal, Apple previously acknowledged the existence of a bug that caused problems syncing settings between devices, and announced its elimination in iOS 16.5. However, the authors of the publication found out that in current firmware versions, including iOS 17 beta, the error is still is present. Apple representatives have already commented on the publication, saying that they are aware of the problem and are working on a fix.