Screen Time App Limits keep disappearing

One thing I read somewhere is that if children delete apps, then download them again from the App Store, that bypasses the limits.

A way to block that is to disallow them from deleting apps or from downloading new ones.

I have to add my backing to this as well: APPLE! Please get this sorted!!

App limits disappear after a day or so. And of course, our kids don’t come and tell us!

And Apple have locked their iOS down so much that we can’t even rely on a good 3rd party option.

Come on!!!

NozzaTwit wrote:

I have to add my backing to this as well: APPLE! Please get this sorted!!

App limits disappear after a day or so. And of course, our kids don’t come and tell us!

And Apple have locked their iOS down so much that we can’t even rely on a good 3rd party option.

Come on!!!

I read somewhere that one workaround that kids use is to delete apps, and then re-download them from the App Store. This has the side effect of getting rid of app limits.

To keep them from doing this, use Screen Time to lock down their phones further so that they can't delete apps, or install new ones, without your approval.

Same issue here. It’s clearly related to the ”one more minute”-feature in my kid’s phone. Even if this feature is disabled (Block at the end of the limit), he can see this option going back and forth between apps. Then, doing that a couple of times, all the restrictions magically disappear. This has been the case for a looooong time. It's so ridiculous they haven’t fixed it and seem not even to care. It makes me wonder what other (security) issues are hidden inside these once-so-secure-and-superior devices.

So we updated my son’s phone to 17.1.2 recently and FINALLY the app limits seem to be sticking around. They would usually disappear within a day or so, but we are going on almost a week and they are still there. Fingers crossed …

Been a while since Apple responded to this issue. What gives? This has been an issue for me for over a year. Parental controls were the ONLY reason I moved my family to Apple devices. Now that Google has Family Link, I don't see a reason to stay.

For what it's worth:

Mac Observer – How to Disable One More Minute Screen Time Limit on iPhone

I read somewhere else that some kids get around restrictions by deleting and re-downloading apps. That can be blocked by disabling the ability for kids to delete apps or download new ones without parental approval.

Don’t believe Apple’s lies. There are multiple bugs so that the parental controls have never worked, and Apple has no interest in fixing them. If you try to get help, they will give you a run around of endless settings to check, reboots, updating iOS. I have tried all of it, and it never works for more than five minutes. For a company that prides itself on user friendliness, you have to wonder if this isn’t intentional just to get kids more addicted to their phones. I don’t think that Apple is lacking the talent to make parental controls work. In my experience, both Microsoft and Google parental controls is that they work much better. When it’s time to upgrade my kids’ phones, they will be androids, not iPhones.

I had this problem and I think I’ve possibly found the cause.

i had an older iMac with outdated OS X that could not officially be upgraded but it was in daily use and active.

first I upgraded all iPhones in the family to latest iOS but the problem persisted.

but when I found the opencore legacy patcher and was able to upgrade my older iMac - now screen time seems more stable and the app limits have not disappeared in 3 days..

Hello everybody! Looks like the problem has been fixed (after months of issues). The App Limits and all the others settings are no longer deleted automatically. I have 2 devices with App Limits and both of them retained their Screen Time configuration. Does it work for you too? P.S. I did not do anything special... one day... it decided to work (like it was supposed to).

When will this be fixed? This is such a pain. I have reset the configuration, logout of iTunes and App Store and bunch of other things and nothing is sticking. Screen time settings including passcode, block settings for family members disappear every few hours

It is still happening. It takes quite a while to set up with different limits for different apps, and then just disappears. It can happen after 1 day if your a lucky duck. It sure does suck. I have current iOS - 17.3.1. So they have done zip to fix this it seems. After more than year and presumably many complaints. This is one of the top features of screen time, used to work just fine prior to late 2022. So it losing it makes screen time only about 1/3 as useful. So so frustrating.

You would think that the whole parental control software could have been re-written from scratch with the time taken to fix this bug. It’s obvious they do not want to limit the damaging effects off too much screen time on our kids! Apple obviously want a generation of kids addicted to their phones! I think it’s time to look at other phones that do parental control better!

Same issues I’m having. It keeps disappearing the time limits set up. Sometimes multiple times a day. All started after the ios16 update.

We are seeing the same issue. App limits are disappearing in my daughters iPhone, granting her full access to apps. I keep re-adding it. We are upgrading to 16.2