Apple Screen Time app limits not working

Chris, when will Apple be addressing this? It is clearly a known issue - I have found multiple threads of these discussions with no help from Apple. There is an issue with screen time, specifically downtime settings and app limits. They are disappearing after being set up. Fix this for families, please.

The fact that this solution requires resetting the device is a complete failure on Apple for a very important feature that families rely on for raising children with phones—pathetic priority for a company we trust with so much. I'm sick of this, screetime has been a buggy garbage since it was introduced many years ago. Hire a real engineer to work on this please.

I am experiencing continued issues with setting a screen limit for my child's ipad. We recently upgraded to a new device but kept his existing apple ID. I've set all apps to a time limit - sometimes when that time limit is reached *some* of the apps get blocked while others are available (even when I've set the limit to All Apps & Categories).

We are experiencing a particular issue with Roblox. When I try to set a time limit for this app specfically, it simply doesn't work. i.e. I'll set up 3 minutes screen limit for roblox, go onto the app and after 3 minutes you can continue playing. The screen limit is just not working.

I was alerted to the issue when the kids spent a couple of days with their grandparents and my son racked up 5 hours a day on roblox despite having a 1 hour limit set.

I am tech savvy, and have been through all of the suggested fixes published on this thread and elsewhere online. This is not good enough. A key feature of Apple's brand marketing is around trust - I cannot trust this buggy software which used to work fine. I'm clearly not the only one.

I was perusing my daughters phone to make sure all the limits were still in place, and they were: 1.5 hours daily for social apps (this includes tictoc) and that the “disable app after limit” function was active.

i go to screen time and I see her usage of tictok for today was almost 5 hours.

she has an up to date OS and it’s still not working

Even when it works screentime is a confusing labyrinth that incentivizes family conflict. Don’t make something addictive for our kids and then give us a flimsy control system and then make it our fault.

For me, I've been locking my kid's phone in my safe every night and checking it again the next morning and every time the settings have changed. He has no other devices so he does not have my password. I've even taken screen shots of what the Screen Time settings looked like the night before and what they looked like the next morning to make doubly sure they changed and they did. When I open his phone after having it locked up all night, some or all of the settings have changed themselves. And I can go into his phone, open Screen Time and change any setting I want even though I have it set to NOT allow that. His phone should prompt for a password (mine) in order to do anything in Screen Time. But it doesn't. I've spent hours and hours on the phone with Apple Support, logging out of both of our Apple accounts, logging back in, changing my Apple password, changing his password, making sure both our phones are updated and on the same iOS version number, but nothing has stopped this issue. It's insane that Apple does not care to fix this.

Just to reply to you… I came from Android, (Samsung Tablet) I only purchased an iPad so my child can FaceTime family and friends as well. I work in IT, so I 100% know how to configure software and what I’m doing. When it’s set, it works. Then the settings “disappear” and the iPad reverts back to having full access to everything.

It’s infuriating that the setting’s constantly disappear and my child is accessing the device PAST the set screen time. With my Android when I had set up FamilyLink, I had ZERO issues with this happening. Apple either needs to fix this or we, as parents, need to make a class action suit against them because this is a danger and hazard to our children.

Has Apple realized kids not addicted to their phones is bad for businesses and intentionally crippled the ScreenTime feature?

I have the same issue, I took my son’s phone with me to be sure that he hasn’t got any other way to remove the downtime and effectively; all restrictions were disabled without anyone touching or even unlocking the phone.

It is clearly a software issue.

I called in to apple support and actually spoke to a person, and got escalated to a supervisor. First they acted like this was new news to them, I’m sure not everyone that answers the phone knows all the problems, but I advised them to read their own support site, that there are thousands of us with the same problems. Essentially the support team just tried to walk me through how to create screen time and app limits which I assured them at this point I am a pro at, it’s not user error.

This is an ongoing problem even with the newest version of iOS 17. This is seemingly purposeful now. Like Apple doesn’t want to fix this bug. How many engineers/coders/programmers do you have? And you can’t fix this? There’s been absolutely no progress on this ongoing problem. Screen Time App Limits continually disappear on a daily basis.

Screen time is the literal reason my kids have apple products. If apple is not willing to fix this problem, my chicken will be switching to bark phones. It would be significantly better for them to have no phones rather than unfiltered access to the internet. Fix screen time.

Wiping all devices did not solve the problem for our household, fyi. I avoided this step for a long time so naturally made it my last option (nuclear, if you will).

Seemed to work for a couple days then app limits began disappearing again. Might be a worthwhile step for you but it was a waste of a Saturday for me.

My daughter's iPad had a limit of 6hrs a day for all aps but her screentime stats say she's been on for 20 today . how is that possible? hours

Good job