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Screen Time ios13 Not working

Im sure everyone is affected by the iOS 13 update with a plethera of problems, the Screen Time is not reporting the time properly on the parents phone and the kids now have unlimited screen time without you knowing........

iPhone XR

Posted on Sep 21, 2019 3:11 PM

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Posted on Oct 1, 2019 7:12 PM

I added the Games Category and some individual apps from Social Media, Creativity, and Other into a group and set a limit. It worked for a while, but something caused it to lose all the individual apps and only the Games Category survived. My kids were able to use the individual apps I had put into the group as much as they wanted. The glitch might have occurred when they got the screen to request more time. It's hard to know exactly when it happened, though. This is a serious problem. I now have absolutely no confidence in this parental control feature.

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Oct 1, 2019 7:12 PM in response to ShadyBrady7447

I added the Games Category and some individual apps from Social Media, Creativity, and Other into a group and set a limit. It worked for a while, but something caused it to lose all the individual apps and only the Games Category survived. My kids were able to use the individual apps I had put into the group as much as they wanted. The glitch might have occurred when they got the screen to request more time. It's hard to know exactly when it happened, though. This is a serious problem. I now have absolutely no confidence in this parental control feature.

Oct 31, 2019 8:54 AM in response to TDSN2014

iphone parental control and screen time is making my life miserable. It work well and suddenly not working. It will suddenly allow my kids to have free access to all apps or I suddenly can’t access the screen time tracking records. Why create such feature and make parents life so miserable that we have to fix this issues every few weeks. Each iOS update make it worst.

Nov 3, 2019 4:53 PM in response to Eric Bostrom

I fixed it by logging out of iCloud on one of her devices. All of a sudden both devices had multiple notifications of screen time being enabled by a parent. I logged her back in and screen time was working, with multiple 1 minute allowances, seemingly an allowance for every time I'd tried to enable screen time from one of our devices. I deleted all allowances except one, and set it to her normal 45 minutes and it's been working fine ever since.

Oct 25, 2019 5:49 PM in response to ShadyBrady7447

On my phone all the limits are there but when I check my child’s phone there’s nothing. I tried setting them on her phone but then it doesn’t allow her to request more time from me or anything. It asks for the screen time password which I can’t enter if she isn’t with me. The connection between our phones through the “family” seems to be missing. This needs fixed ASAP. This is why we have iPhones.

Nov 3, 2019 7:44 AM in response to Cloo1978

My kid asked me to reinstate screentime. I hadn't even noticed it wasn't working. It had been working so well for so long. During the recent wildfires I had added her fave apps to always allowed, but I didn't realize it wasn't tracking time at all. Now I can't get it working again. Have disabled, re-enabled, restarted all devices. All running iOS 13.2

Nov 22, 2019 10:49 AM in response to AgentCunningham

@AgentCunningham, did you ever find a fix? I'm having the EXACT same issue—I set up a limit for the entire Games category, then another one for individual apps from the other categories. After a few days, I noticed her usage was 5-7 hours per day and found that in App Limits only the games category was showing, and all of the individual app limits had disappeared. I set the limits again, and after a few days, same thing—only games category showing. Seems to be a bug when you don't select an entire category.

I've been through SO much grief trying to get screen time to work correctly since iOS 12, but this is by far the biggest issue I've encountered!

Nov 22, 2019 12:42 PM in response to disconnekt

@disconnekt - I feel your pain! I have abandoned the attempt to set limits on individual apps for now. I've had to adjust my approach to be less granular and I end up having to approve more requests from my kids. I did verify, however, that logging the child's phone out of iCloud, and then logging back in, does fix other problems, like failing to update rules or failing to update the time reported back to my phone.


Did you notice that time request approvals no longer work from the Apple Watch? Approving from the watch does nothing. I must do it from the phone now. :-(


I will post an update if I learn anything new about this topic. Good luck!

Screen Time ios13 Not working

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