iPhone Screen time keeps auto resetting

As of November 2022, the screen time 'app limits' reset EVERY DAY. This is a terrible, terrible feature for parents. Why are they doing this to us? Just to hook the kids? What parent wants to go in EVERY DAY and reset app limits? This is so frustrating and sad.

The time limit is a joke. The reset will happen the moment you restart the device. My daughter somehow found this loophole and keep doing it for a while until I realized.

We already did, and for months have been updating in hopes of a fix. It never works. Apple is leading users on a wild goose chase by continuing to suggest they have a fix “in the most recent update” when they clearly do not.

I’m facing the same issue. All the screen time setups are reset every other day. Don't know what to do anymore! Apple needs TO FIX THIS.

I called Apple Support about this, but I could not re-create the error. They have asked I call back as soon as I note it again, so they can investigate logs. If anyone also experiences this problem, I recommend calling as soon as it happens.

Apparently the hack is kids just have to turn off their devices and turn back on to reset the screen time. This is what one of my four kids told me. One snitching on the other 😂

I originally thought (and maybe it might actually be true) that the screen time resets at midnight. I guess I thought this because the screen time on my kids devices is resetting daily. Either way, I seriously hope Apple fixes asap!

Agreed. but the thing I’ve learnt- with 4 kids under 13 - and all of them have devices which I am maniacal about re screen time - there are MANY hacks. My 9 yr old knows a different one to my 11 yr old who knows a different one to my 13 yrs old. There are so many hacks that they all know. Apple is amazing- but screen time is a massive fail for them unfortunately. It just doesn’t work. It’s exhausting for me I find one hack - extinguish it then another one pops up that all these kids know about. My only screen time is literally being the bad guy and ripping the phone or iPad for their hands

I have the same bug since last year. Apple support checked my iPhone and I could reproduce the bug on the remote screen support, however they told me that is looks like a hardware error and need to replace iPhone.(I had iPhone 12 Pro at that time)

That was 2022/Feb. I didn’t exchanged but now I own an iPhone 14 pro. The problem still persists.

The screentime setting keeps resetting, sometimes after 1 hour, sometimes lasts for 3 days etc. Even no one uses the iPhone of my kids beside me, it keeps resetting.

When I wait loading of the screen time data, sometimes the setting comes back, but mostly it doesn’t and I have to set it back again. I am pretty sure it’s something wrong with iCloud server and syncing the screentime data.

So it looks like I’m not just one that has this problem. I am thinking to delete my family group and recreate, however I have to move my kids account to different group before I can destroy my own group, and I have not enough information what will happen to my family’s account as I only have iCloud subscription. Like photos or iCloud data my family are using currently.

Did anyone tried to recreate the family group?

@trackpoint

I have tried removing everyone from the family group and then adding back. Same issue still happens, but not removing the family group entirely as I still have one child under 13 and he has to be added to another family group or account deleted before doing so.

The other issue I want to avoid is once you use another Apple ID to use for family sharing, you have to wait 90 days before being able to switch back and share purchases. I have everything under my main Apple ID (subscriptions, photos). So doing it this way just seems more of a pain to me.

In one of my previous post, I mentioned I thought screen time was resetting at midnight. So, I went into all my kids screen time around 9 am and set downtime on my device. I checked their screen time (downtime and restrictions) again on the same day around 8 pm. Then I checked their devices to see if they were actually in downtime mode when they were scheduled to be. All devices were in downtime mode and accurate with my downtime settings. I checked downtime and restrictions next morning around 930, everything was reset. 🤦🏻‍♀️ I’ve done this for a few days now. 😒

Hi All,

I cannot urge everyone enough to please submit support tickets for each of these instances. I've logged one with video captures showing the reset of features (heavily emphasizing my concern at content restrictions resetting to Explicit/Allow All) and an Apple engineer witnessed it when sharing my screen and kids ipads were my possession. The support folks are amazing and it's not difficult or time consuming.

Official Apple Support

Also, folks with kids that have figured out hacks can you also please log these. These should be even easier to replicate/fix as they appear to be repeatable.

Thanks!

Thanks for the info. Is it 90 days until you can switch back? I thought it was once a year.

> I am guessing some iCloud sync fail safe mode is clearing the settings

I think this is correct. I always set the downtime from 22:00 - 21:59 and let kids request to use.

However this setting keeps resetting almost every day. After setting this, I sometimes re-check the setting,

and see it gets reset and shows the default value for few seconds and then the setting sets back. (You can see that on the short movie I link, menu is in Japanese tho...)

I think the setting is on iCloud, and iPhone syncs with it but the server times out sometime (maybe overloaded or so), and the setting on iOS will be reset to default. And it syncs the default setting to the server after it gains the connection back. Just my thoughts.

https://youtube.com/shorts/XTgp8I3gmo0

Okay thanks for the picture.As it looks like some sync failure, recreating a family group won't help much...

I am on very stable fiber connection with Wi-Fi. I think it's server side sometimes it takes very long time to retreive the screentime data.

I will open a ticket at apple support so they know there is some issue on the system itself. I doubt they are reading this forum.

The limits reset, as in if you allow 1 hour each day, then at midnight the 1 hour will refresh. So if you child uses 45 minutes today, at midnight it will refresh to allow 1 hour within the next 24 hour period.

That makes total sense. I feel dumb now. Haha

But my child’s screen settings were just turning off and messing up. I actually followed the advice of someone to sign out of my iTunes and sign back in. So far that seems to have fixed it.

That's not what's happening.

The limits are 'resetting' as in if you set a one hour per day time limit it may work for one or two days and then the limit itself resets and is no longer present in the settings; screentime reverts to the default unlimited.