Apple Screen Time app limits not working

The only thing that works for me is to only make changes on my kid’s devices. If I use my phone to make changes, it messes it all up. I have reset all devices and have worked with apple tech support extensively. My kids devices were working well that way UNTIL I put Roblox back on one- it is an app I own but shared via family sharing. It immediately made all settings to completely bonkers on all the devices, not even just the one with the roblox download. I deleted it and reset everything through the iPads (not my phone) and it took a few re-do’s but is now working again. It’s terrible.

We have 10 iOS devices plus a couple of osx, resetting them has taken a lot of time and setting them back up longer.

Before I reset them screentime was completely useless, the activity screen updating could take several minutes each time you open it and to change any settings, you had to turn the device off and on again, often only lasting a few seconds and the changes usually didn’t stick.

After I reset all the devices it started working more quickly, I thought it was fixed. A day later all the old settings came back. I focused on fixing App Limits settings, I deleted all settings in the morning and waited, in the afternoon with still no setting I set up new ones, the next day all the old settings were back. There is a long list of other issues and bugs and am giving up.

Apple usually have a good track record of fixing bugs, but this has been going on for months and there have been a number of releases in the meantime and none with fixes.

Very disappointed with Apple on this. There are some really good third party apps with better functionality as well, but can be a pain to install and maintain and kids can more easily work around them, but at least they work.

This was my experience as well. After reset, I was pretty hopeful because the Screen Time module was noticeably more responsive and less finnicky. We still lose App Limits after certain ‘triggers’ (changes to content/restrictions, unanswered app requests, certain downtime changes, etc.) but it seems a little more stable.

It’s comical that we’re all publicly and openly troubleshooting a widespread Apple software issue on an apple.com forum but without the assistance of Apple… To be honest, I’ve found more answers on Reddit than on here which speaks to the broken state of Apple’s support and public communications. Even a rep sliding into this forum to say “We’re aware of the issue and are working on a patch/resolution” would go a long way.

Words couldn’t be more true. I’ve been rather shocked by the lack of urgency on Apple’s part. It’s a critical issue for parents who have bought into the Apple ecosystem for their children. It says a lot. I’ve been on the phone more hours than I can count since Sept/Oct with Apple reps. I think they only just acknowledged it in Jan. I don’t think there will be a true fix until they patch it though.

I am grateful to see sustained good conversation around this topic and we are influencing improvement by being here. Glad to know I am not the only one.

Apple will eventually patch this issue and recalibrate their attempt to "improve" parental controls across devices in the household ecosystem. Its awful at the moment, but I will wait it out, albeit not quietly. For those that prefer to leave the Apple ecosystem, the competing system is FamilyLink:

https://families.google/familylink/

While our family never used Family Link at any point before switching from Android to iPhone (I don’t think it even existed yet) we did some research on it later. However, one of the reasons we still got iPhones for the younger kids, who weren’t locked into any one ecosystem yet, was due to a friend’s advice that Family Link was at best just as finicky as Screen Time. That’s what our research seemed to confirm as well. Again, it’s not my own personal experience, but just thought I’d share.

Apple really needs to fix the syncing process issue as I believe that’s one of the main problems. What else would explain why changing Screen Time settings from the guardians’ phones ALWAYS messes up something, but making the same changes on the kids’ phones never (at least for us) does? I think the parental controls feature just overall needs more attention given to it in iOS updates. As of now, my advice from our experience is try to change as few settings as possible, and when it’s necessary, make changes on the kids’ phones (also from experience: make sure they haven’t started a screen recording to get the passcode when you type it in, look for the telltale red bar or bubble at the top of the screen)

This is very helpful, thank you. However, shame on Apple for this workaround. It reminds me of Windows not Apple. Screen time is a fundamental tool on IOS. They need to do better with their $30B 4th qtr profit. Apple's brand used to represent "it just works." That is no longer part and parcel with Apple. It is sad.

I just switched over to Apple because android options for my kids screen time were ridiculous! I was so excited to have a system that would actually work for us! Well that lasted not even a month! Now the screen times just keep getting wiped clean. I am so frustrated about this especially after seeing all the comments from everyone else. I agree with the others Apple doesn’t really care about our children’s safety and the fact they aren’t warning people about this issue just proves it. It makes me want to trash it all and be done with electronics. If I knew it wouldn’t handicap my children in the world they are growing up in I would!

I've found that screen time can be forced to disappear if you continually ask for "one more minute" on a number of apps. After about 2 minutes of doing this on various apps, the settings disappear. Still waiting on a resolution from apple after calling them and spending about 3 hours on the phone in total...

Screen time has not been working for us too, despite resetting the phones several times. It started with the phones resetting its screen time settings and turning off all screen time limits, and now we even have problems trying to turn on their screen time, it’s taking forever to log

I have been having the same issues and just got it resolved. I talked to Sean, who hadn't heard of the issue previously, but we got it working. I'm still not sure what happened or why it's working now, but what he did was install a certain VPN thing (Well, I did the install but he sent it to my phone). It was to allow the engineering team to see the code that was going on as the error was occurring. This required my phone to restart to install the VPN. After it restarted, it worked. I have restarted my phone in the past multiple times with no success, so I don't know why it worked this time, and neither did he. We uninstalled the VPN afterward, and the screen time changes are still taking hold now. I hope this helps others.

Unfortunately we spent the time frustration to reset the devices, like Apple suggested above. The app limits worked for about two weeks and now we’re back to the same problem. This is NOT a fix. It has to be fixed on their end

For what it’s worth:

After we reset all devices and basically set up our family from scratch, app limits kept disappearing also.

After reading a few successes on here, we set the limits from the child devices instead of the parent devices and they haven’t disappeared in ~10 days or so. That’s the longest it’s worked since September. Obviously the overall product is still broken but it’s at least been a respite from a broken ‘feature’ in our case.

I've been dealing with this issue for months since iOS 16 came out. Similar to other users' comments, customer service communicated it's a known issue. A rep continues to check in with me, but she's clueless about a solution to this or the status of a fix. I've been a loyal Apple user since 2002, and I can't believe I'm thinking about leaving Apple because of this one bug. It's a huge source of pain in my family because we cannot manage our child's screen time without settings repeatedly deleting themselves and settings not saving.

The exact thing has been happening to me for my kids and this is extremely disappointing given Apple’s reputation. Although Steve Jobs is gone so Apple is not the same. That said, this is a glitch that should be fixed immediately with a patch not resetting devices, logging off and back in, etc. Fix this issue Apple!!