Apple Screen Time app limits not working

I have found relatively stable screentime settings, with much trial and error and far too many hours on the phone with apple, by doing the following:

only upload/purchase apps through the kid’s apple account. So basically avoid family sharing of apps

NEVER EVER EVER do “1 more minute”

never grant more time via screentime through a request sent, or adding directly to the time via screentime password.

I always increase or decrease the limit and, if needed, downtime, to allow extra time.

keep it simple a couple app limited that are set to every day, and basic down time.

I do find that when it flips out, the permissions section often gets a wiped out. Sometime it magically reappears.

This May well work, but for how long? Everytime a new ios update is pushed out, there seems to be a problem with screentime when either my phone updates to the latest iOS or my kids phones don’t, or vice versa and then screentime breaks again and i find my kids have been staying up late on their phones again. This is so frustrating and it really upsets me that Apple value their customers so little that they allow this to continue to be their worst/most unreliable app year after year. Screentime used to work much better when it was an independent ios app, so when Apple purchased it and baked it right in to iOS my expectations were that it would work even more ‘seamlessly’. Absolutely useless, thanks Apple!

Try this: Leave the Settings app running in the background on your device after setting the app limit.

We usually clear all the running apps to free the device memory. Remember to leave the Setting tap aside.

This issue has been re-occurring again. Is it a system glitch?? I've contact AppleCare 4+ times to set app limits using parental controls for my sons phone. They keep getting over ridden even though we have updated software, reset phones and reset limits. Very frustrating. If it keeps malfunctioning, is there another product I can use?

I'm glad that works. Perhaps you have a five year old. The child is in charge of doing "one more minute" so that won't work. Granting a request is how the screen time works, so if that messes things up, it's apple's problem. Basically, this response is saying that Apple Screen time doesn't work. Apple Fix This.

I'm glad that works. Perhaps you have a five year old. The child is in charge of doing "one more minute" so that won't work. Granting a request is how the screen time works, so if that messes things up, it's apple's problem. Basically, this response is saying that Apple Screen time doesn't work. Apple Fix This. This was in response to a post but the post isn't showing up. No idea why.

Go away from Apple unfortunately. I allowed my kids to go to Apple products for their phones and it has turned out to be the mistake I dreaded. I even bought an extra apple phone to help manage the screentime and I regret it all

In mine as well. If the set screen times would just stay and work, it would help. It doesn't seem so much to ask. It's also stupid that if you allow an app all the time, you need to delete it from the app time allowed. The whole thing is so poorly designed. Apple should be ashamed.

Update seems to have fixed it for me. I mean, time will tell, but so far I’ve done a ton of things that, during the past few months, would have resulted in limits and permissions going all crazy.

Did the update work for anyone whose been posting here?

The problem I've experienced in the past is that over time new iOS updates are released but my childrens devices don't automatically install the new updates despite having ticked the option to automatically install new updates, so that when my phone updates its then on a different iOS version to my childrens devices and thats when the problems with Screentime start.

My kids phones did not automatically update to 16.4. I think it must pop up on their phone asking them if they want to update it and they say no, knowing that it will break Screentime limitations and allow them to stay up all night watching Netflix. Kids are smart and they catch on quickly, if not updating your phones operating system allows them to watch more television, they learn that very quickly.

While i appreciate your simplistic approach, it’s not all that practical for the long term as they use the alarms on their phones to wake them up and the torch if they wake up through the night and on occasion play noise sounds or quiet music to help get them to sleep, so taking their phones away from them every night works in the short term but not for more than a week really. It’s a bit like if i told you the message function on my phone wasn’t delivering messages and you told me to jump on my bike and deliver the message in person. Kind of defeats the purpose of having the phone in the first place. I think also the expectation is high that having Screentime baked right in to iOS is that it will work rather well, i mean it’s not like they’re having to communicate with third parties, all the features are with in iOS so you’d think Apple could work this out.

Can I just ask - how do you do the 'sign out of iCloud' step? Im scared stiff of resetting stuff and then losing everything! Its my phone that controls the family sharing piece so I would be resetting my phone and my daughters. Might be a basic question but thanks in advance!

Update 16.4 did not resolve the issue for us. Downtime seems to not get cleared but app limits get reset 3-4 times per day. So far we have just been periodically checking and re-adding them. We decided that since downtime appears to be working, we just roll back downtime hours if they go over on our agreed upon app limits. Still super annoying.

Was the the fix pes1 used for one child with the same Apple ID on all devices? I ask because I put different apple ids on different devices. This way I used to be able to have different limits on each device because one is used for school--iPad. The phone is not for school.)

Even though there are two different apple ids, the screen time "app limits" is a complete mess on the phone. Old App limits will not delete. Downtime reverts to off. When I reset, everything reverts back to the mess. The iPad seems to work ok.

My son noticed that there are two different apple ids on the phone -- one for purchases through Family Sharing and one for the screen time, photos, etc. Does anyone else have this issue?

I was just talking with an Apple Support technician, about the collection of issues around Family Sharing/ScreenTime. I also referenced this Apple Community thread. He said our engineers are aware of it, are actively working on it and expect to release a fix in iOS 16.4.2, in about a week. 🙏🏼

He also shared good advice about making sure your devices are backed up before performing any iOS/MacOS updates 🤓