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The Apple Support Community will permanently close on November 20, 2026. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state.
You can continue to find trusted guidance and support on the official Apple Support site.
We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.
I use screen time to set limits on the usage of games and social apps for the kids, but the feature routinely gets reset or disabled.
Suspecting the kids hacked it, I have changed the password repeatedly. The new password they have never seen, they have never been near me, and I have not written it down.
screen time keeps resetting.
I am guessing some iCloud sync fail safe mode is clearing the settings
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
After nearly two years of watching my kid's phone blow through all the present screen time limits (downtime, app limits, all of them!) and then seeing the dreaded "X failed passcode attempts" box every few days and having to reset it, only to repeat every few days, I have finally figured two possibilities that have corrected this bug once I changed them:
1) I had also had my wife set as a parent/guardian on the 'family' setting, so that she would get the screen time requests. I changed this to 'Adult' instead of 'parent/guardian' for her. Now I am the only 'parent/guardian' in the 'family'.
2) I logged out of my icloud account on my mac since I noticed often times my kids screen time fail would occur after using my mac. I am now only logged in to my icloud on my iphone. This offsets many of the features of the mac, including imessage, but I'm willing to let those go if I don't have to deal with the frustration of not having screen time work as its supposed to.
I'm not sure which of these (or maybe the combination) was causing this screen time issue, but after making these two changes, it has now been over a week without the screen time failing once, the longest in a couple years for me.
THIS IS STILL HAPPENING! I've been checking every forum and post for a year now, it is completely ridiculous. I have called in in the past, and it's been a complete waste of time. Every tip or trick to fix it works very temporarily or not at all. DO BETTER, APPLE. I have been an Apple customer for almost 20 years, and I am seriously considering switching to a company that has parental controls that actually work. These pages and pages of unanswered posts show that you really do not care about the things that are important to your customers.
FIX THIS APPLE! You know you can, and yet you refuse to change this. Look at the hundreds of comments here. Why do Time Limits reset every night at midnight? This is a load of 💩 for our kids, and the parents who assume what they entered is doing its job. Really awful of Apple.
Same for me too. Every couple days all the restrictions I have placed will just be gone. I can still see the activity but the limits are all gone. Both the time limits and content restrictions. This is bad. Apple, FIX THIS!!!!
Hello Apple,
I've been experiencing an ongoing issue for the past three years, and despite trying numerous troubleshooting methods, including the basic "switch computer on and off" approach, the problem persists. As a developer in a large company, it's frustrating to see this issue unresolved. I'm perplexed as to why it hasn't been addressed yet.
It's disheartening to think that the only explanation could be a focus on keeping users engaged with social media platforms. I hope this matter can be addressed promptly. Thank you.
I WOULD JUST KINDLY POINT OUT THAT SCEEN TIME CAN NOT BE TRUSTED. THEREFORE THE APPLE BE TRUSTED. I WILL NEVERE EVER AGINA BUY A PRODUCT FROMT THIS SCAM COMPANY EVERER. ITS LIKE A DRUG PUSHER TO KIDS, PROMISING PARANTS A WAY TO DEAL WITH THE CHALLENGES THEY CAUSE. BUT THEN ONLY TO SABOTAGE EVERYTHING RANDOMLY.
STEVE JOBS WOULD TURN IN HIS GRAVE IF HE KNOW HOW YOU MISMANAGED THIS ISSUE!
Same, I am constantly having to reset the settings, I too changed the passcode suspecting the kids had figured it out but that was not the case.
Apple needs to fix this issue big time. Between content safety settings and time restrictions, this is getting ridiculous when touted as an Apple family safety feature. It hardly ever works
Agreed. This fix is not rocket science. I am concerned Apple simply has no intent of fixing this issue. How much money are they throwing at new space age features, and they cannot make this simplest of features function correctly?
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.
Did someone from Apple tracking this forum?
Dear APPLE,
Screen time DOES NOT WORK, ALL SETTINGS RESETS ABRUPTLY , AND THIS IS HAPPENING FOR THE LAST 3 years.
I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN WORKING ON LATELY, BUT THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE AT ANY LEVEL.
I AM IN TECH INDUSTRY - IF I WOULD BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS PRODUCT , I WOULD HAVE BEEN FIRED A LONG TIME AGO.
I am a 30+ year apple customer, this is the worst experience I had ever.
Any update?
@shwaved waved david
Yes! This! Taking the actual devices from them is the main legit way!
Just so I am aware, can you tell me the other hacks?
I'm seeing where it says it that app limits reset every night at midnight. Why????
It’s “daily” limit so it must be reset the time somewhere. And that’s done when the day changes.
@trackpoint
I am trying this! Fingers crossed it works 🤞🏼 Thank you for sharing!
This happens everyday seemingly overnight too. I just can’t fathom it. My kid deff does not know passcode and does not know the “trick”. Phone down time doesn’t reset. Just app limits
iPhone Screen time keeps auto resetting
