Apple Screen Time app limits not working

We've been hitting the same issue for about 2 weeks. We've used Screen Time to limit the amount of time our daughters get on their iPads each day for years. After an hour, they have to ask for more time. Since around Christmas, it's stopped working. When my wife and I go into our Screen Time settings, there are no restrictions in place for either of our daughters. Every time we add restrictions again, they vanish by the next day. Every time. The feature is completely busted right now.

This worked for us with the exception of one thing:

Once we reset all devices and re-enabled Screen Time for the child devices, the app limits were still present. App Limits then disappeared after a day or so (as they have for months – root problem for us).

Custom App Limits were still there after basically a full screen time reset, which made me distrust their presence anyway so just recreated them after they disappeared. No problems for going on 4 days and Screen Time is no longer sluggish. I think we’re fixed.

Basically, I followed Gidgehe’s instructions. Only thing I’d change is this: If App Limits are present after you’ve reset all devices, delete them and re-create yourself.

Some people are saying it does and some are saying it doesn’t. I think there’s something causing it that we haven’t quite figured out yet, which is why it works for some people that doesn’t for others. (Nevertheless, this issue is unacceptable, not trying to excuse it.) At this point, however, all we can do is let you know what works for us. As I said, in my post above, do a reset, but you don’t have to set it up from scratch – just restore a back up. Once it’s restored, try not to change screen time settings too often. Again, this worked for me, but I don’t know if it will work for everyone.

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)

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.

You can try MMGuardian, Bark or OurPact. We used to have MMG on Android and it worked great. But then made the mistake of moving our kids to iPhones (because that's what everyone else has at their school). I didn't think it would be that different, but due to iPhone "privacy" policies, MMG was a shell of itself. We ended up getting rid of MMG. You can sync their text messages to your computer, which is a bit glitchy (on Android it syncs right to your phone and it works well). And now Apple set up more privacy policies so the child has to "allow" the computer to get the messages. You can also set web filters, but no app limits. Family Link by Google works well with Android also. That's their 'screen time' app.

At any rate, anyone who seriously wants a good parental control experience should go with Android phones. I'd say that even if Screen Time was working perfectly. I've had an iPhone and now use Google Pixel and I'll never go back. I'd love to switch my kids back, but not ready to die on that hill.

Oh and the reason I'm in this thread at all is because my app limits disappear. Sometimes multiple times per day. I think it's the 'one more minute' request that does it, mostly. But sometimes, I have both of their phones in my possession the limits will disappear.

I've tested it on one of the kid phones. When I tapped one more minute, I was free to use the test app as much as I wanted. It never came back to tell me my time was up.

I'm currently testing the "set the limits on their devices" method. Just set it up this morning. We'll see what happens.

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.

we struggled with this for almost 7 months. applying all the recent updates and doing a reset 3 weeks ago everything appears to be holding strong for 3+ weeks. also the latest security update also talks to this fix as well.

For what it is worth, it has been 3 weeks since I turned off screen time, reset network settings on my iphone and turned screentime back on my kids' MacBook Airs and so far the limits have not changed. Knock on wood

What I noticed is that, once I tried the steps I listed above, and returning later, the limits won’t show till I put the code in. So if I open the downtime screen, put the code, wait five seconds, the app brings up the downtime limits I left this morning. If I then go and open the app limits, the right limits will appear.

however if I go straight to the app limits they are not set.

my kids have asked for screen time today hence it felt like they were working.

I hope this helps

app limit does not work for me since more than 1/2 year. Support said, my kid has maybe to code. I shall keep resetting, renaming and upgrading my phones, well none of this has helped. The function is just dead. One things works, I have configured downtime for basically the entire day, my kids know they must request time from me, we have an agreement with the kids, they request only the time we agreed upon. This is now working without app limit for me.

I've called Apple Support several times, and each time the adviser doesn't know it's a problem...until today. She finally told me that the engineers know about it, and they are working on it. Someone messed up the code in one of the updates and they need to figure this out ASAP.

I have posted this already, I try again: what works is that you do not use app limit, which does not work stable as one can read here. Instead you tell the kids phone that it is night all the time. The kid need to request screen time every day, in this way they play only the time we agreed upon and I even know every day which apps they like. Solution is downtime from 12:01 to 11:59.

First point of attack might be to try get the various news outlets that covered this in Aug to follow up. Most articles claimed Apple had stated it would be fixed next patch.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2023/08/05/apple-ios-16-ipados-16-iphone-ipad-bug-screentime-bug-new-iphone-problem/?sh=3bd411cf30f4

https://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-parental-controls-are-broken-55a2aa52

https://9to5mac.com/2023/07/31/screen-time-is-broken/

Mine appears to be working as of the other evening. I changed a few settings and I’m not sure if that made made difference. Initially I had set time limits for individual apps but I think that might have been causing some conflict. Instead I just set a overall time limit for “all apps and categories”, I retoggled all the switches on and off. When I set a time limit, I made sure to select the greyed area above where it shown the time selected rather than just exit the page. I have no idea if any of these changes were what did it for me but so far it appears to be working. Just FYI, you can also set individual time limits on your child’s phone for specific apps. I did that too.