Parental Controls keep resetting and turning off on their own

I recently had a similar issue with my kids.

What happens in the background is that whenever you open screentime for your kids, it actually requests the information in real time, that is why there is a delay. Apple doesn’t seem to store anything related to the screentime on the cloud.

This is both a blessing and a curse for us parents. When there is an iOS version mismatch it can create random issues. When the parents device is on a newer version of iOS than the kids, there is no issue as it knows how to talk to the older version as well. However, if the kids device is on a newer version, it might not know how to talk to it. When it gets an unknown response, it displays nothingness. Then you close it and it sends the updated version of nothing to your kids phone.

All of the above is based on my experience as a developer and anecdotal evidence I will explain below.

This happened to me about a week or two ago. I was trying to unlock an app for my kid and it went crazy as randomly it has before. I decided that night to sort out what happened.

What I discovered was that my phone was on 16.2 and my kid was on 16.3

Looking into the release notes I discovered there were changes to the screentime back end. With the phones side by side I opened it up on my phone and still was being stupid. Reset everything on her phone and opened it on mine again…. Reset.

I then updated my phone to 16.3.1 (hers was still 16.3) and now everything was working as expected, I reset everything on my phone, her phone updated as expected, I changed it on her phone, my phone reflected the changes.

I updated her phone from 16.3 to 16.3.1 and everything still worked.

I am making a lot of educated guesses here. I tried to confirm by having a buddy of mine that was having the same issue check versions and he also had the problem of kids having newer versions of iOS. Updated and everything worked.

Hope this helps someone.

Hi parentalcontrolsnotworking,

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. If you haven't already, we'd recommend changing your Screen Time passcode, then testing again. This might help refresh things and stop this from happening. The following guidance is from How to reset the Screen Time passcode for your personal device.

"On an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

1. Go to Settings > Screen Time. 
2. Tap Change Screen Time Passcode, then tap Change Screen Time Passcode again.
3. Tap Forgot Passcode?
4. Enter the Apple ID and password* that you used to set up the Screen Time passcode.
5. Enter a new Screen Time passcode, then enter it again to confirm."

If the same continues, it would be best to have Apple Support take a look since this sounds unexpected.

Take care.

I am having the same issue, except I do know what is causing it. The same cause has also removed the option for communication safety in Screen Time settings.

I would recommend you check in your logs in the header of a log for any installed app that says:

Beta Identifier:  XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX

If you have that and are not enrolled in the Apple beta program, it will explain why screen time keeps turning off…

With the latest iOS update (17.3.1) this seems to finally be fixed from my end. I've had this same issue for YEARS so hopefully it sticks this time!!

Hi. I have this too. But I think I worked it out.

iPads are set up correctly. Both running iOS 16.3.1. Parental control working fine.

My eldest kid (8) showed me that if she makes an app crash, all parental controls come back. She knows how to make an acrylic nail crash, and when it goes back to the Home Screen, all parental controls are off.

I am kind of proud of her, I work in software development myself.

this has to be an iOS bug but I am struggling to get Apple to a)believe me and b) fix it.

Apple is well aware it is not a pass code issue. I have talked to them three separate phone calls and they acknowledge. They are aware of the problem and supposedly working on it.

It has caused so many problems with my children as obviously they don’t tell us when our safety nets fail. They just continue to use the phone as we do not intend them to do.!!!!!!!

I wish Apple would actually work on this and communicate what is going on and when we can expect it to work

It’s too easy for them to ignore this support forum entirely. I think that the only way to get more action on this is to actually engage Apple support: https://getsupport.apple.com/

As the saying goes “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” We have to complain enough that their developers apply some effort to getting this fixed.

Again, if you have this issue please submit it to (repeatedly if necessary)

https://getsupport.apple.com/

I agree with you, and this is very frustrating.

I decided to use 3rd party apps to do more monitoring and content filtering, that seems to be working better. We currently use Qustodio.

My daughter's phone (bought last summer) keeps the parental controls on - no problems. She doesn't play games, mostly reads news, youtube and a few websites. However, my son's phone (bought a few months ago) is constantly dropping parental controls. He downloads lots of games and plays many at the same time (switching back and forth), also watches youtube. I've reentered the settings multiple times a week for months now. Super frustrating.

I updated my OS to 16.4.1 a few days ago and so far screen time hasn't stopped working (for 2 days). It would be nice if Apple's Community team responded with a verification that updating the OS will fix the issue.

I have reset all the settings, including screen time password and block after up limit is up. In the morning, the screen time password has gone, the rest of the settings are intermittently reset.

every morning this week I have had to reset the settings and the child has had no access to my phone.

I will be arranging to go to Apple support but this can’t be dismissed, the functionality is glitching.

Same issue here, and seriously annoying (and not giving us a good feeling as parent)!

I have read in another conversation/discussion that this might have to do with Macs that are enrolled in Testflight (that that would be the reason why the parent-control settings keep resetting).

I have not followed-up on that conversation anymore so i cannot confirm if that fixes the issue (just wanted to let you know, maybe this could help). (in meantime we are using a parent-app called Qustodia what also gives us the control as parents).

This happens when my child gives himself one more minute when limit is reached, all restrictions are gone.

Is there any idea when this is going to be fixed because my kids continue to watch their phones and as soon as it fails, they stay on their phones and go to websites and apps I don’t allow and it’s not like they’re going to say oh mom, my phones letting us do stuff we shouldn’t it’s continuous fight

This is happening several times a week

It's not a passcode issue, it sometimes happens while I am in settings and with both kids' devices next to me! It keeps happening over and over. We've tried to make sure all settings are identical on mine & husband's phones, tried doing things from icloud, etc, but nothing helps!

This has been happening to me too. As a parent, you do your best to make sure your children are protected and when the protection you put in place fails (due to no fault of your own), it is VERY frustrating. Now I have to check the settings multiple times a day just to make sure it’s still on. Apple needs to fix this quickly. And as often as there are updates put out, you would think it would have already been fixed.