Child changing time zone to avoid downtime on Family Sharing

Hey pasha297,

We are happy to help! To prevent Time Zone changes, go to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Location Services > System Services > Setting Time Zone. You will want this feature to be disabled. Then go back to Location Services and set this to "Don't Allow Changes."

You should then go to Settings > General > Date & Time. A message should appear that says "The time zone cannot be set manually due to device restrictions."

You can find more information on Screen Time Settings here: Set up parental controls with Family Sharing on iPhone - Apple Support

Take care!

Hey,

So I had that problem as well, which was frustrating me for weeks now. I had couple calls with Apple Support and finally found a solution with engineer from 2nd level of support.

Solution provided (below) by @bbesspete is correct - but on one important condition: it can be done only from child device (assuming that Screen Time is already enabled there), that option is missing on parent's device.

To prevent Time Zone changes, go to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions

> Location Services > System Services > Setting Time Zone. You will want this feature to be disabled. Then go back to Location Services and set this to "Don't Allow Changes."

This is not good, this should work from parent`s device. Fix it Apple please.

Enjoy and good luck Parents !

• The missing step to blocking the date and time changes is to turn the green time passcode off and on from the parent account after the steps everyone keeps doing. If screen time has been enabled then you need to disable them to start.
• Go to Settings>General>Date & Time > Toggle on ‘Set Automatically’
• Now, got back into screen time and enable it.
• Then tap “Content & Privacy Restrictions” and toggle it on
• Scroll down and tap ‘Location Services’
• Go down to ‘System Services’
• Make sure that ‘Setting Time Zone’ is toggled off and then tap ‘Back’
• At the top of the ‘Location Services’ screen, check ‘Don’t Allow Changes.’  
• When you scroll down now you will notice that ‘Setting Time Zone’ is greyed out – meaning that changes can’t be made!

TURN SCREEN TIME PASSCODE OFF AND ON FROM THE OARENT ACCOUNT.

• Go back to Settings>General>Date & Time and you’ll see that this has been greyed out too.

So I can confirm I made this work on iOS 17 in 2024 on both devices.

You have to set it up on child’s device first:

First turn on automatic Time zone in Settings -> General -> Time and Date -> turn on automatic time zone via Set Automatically.

Exit out.

Then in Settings -> Screen Time -> Content … -> Location services

Enter Screen Time code.

Location services (Allow changes if forbidden) -> scroll to the bottom and in System Services

find Setting Time Zone and make sure it’s turned on.

Now go up one level and on top click on Don’t Allow Changes.

After these steps return to main Settings screen using the back button, otherwise you allow your kids to access these Parental settings without passcode.

Now go back to your phone. Turn parental controls for the kid off and on. In my case everything (Apps and time limits) loaded back except downtime, that I had to select again.

Now you can sleep peacefully.

Also this should prevent getting weird email messages informing you someone signed in using child’s iCloud account on a new device.

• The missing step to blocking the date and time changes is to turn the green time passcode off and on from the parent account after the steps everyone keeps doing. If screen time has been enabled then you need to disable them to start.
• Go to Settings>General>Date & Time > Toggle on ‘Set Automatically’
• Now, got back into screen time and enable it.
• Then tap “Content & Privacy Restrictions” and toggle it on
• Scroll down and tap ‘Location Services’
• Go down to ‘System Services’
• Make sure that ‘Setting Time Zone’ is toggled off and then tap ‘Back’
• At the top of the ‘Location Services’ screen, check ‘Don’t Allow Changes.’  
• When you scroll down now you will notice that ‘Setting Time Zone’ is greyed out – meaning that changes can’t be made!

TURN SCREEN TIME PASSCODE OFF AND ON FROM THE OARENT ACCOUNT.

• Go back to Settings>General>Date & Time and you’ll see that this has been greyed out too.

Long-frustrated Apple customer here. And a network/systems/security engineer in the IT field for 25 years.

In my experience (12+ years - my son is almost 16) there is only one way to make screen time give you a measure of control closer to what you/we all want: you have to set ‘downtime’ as ‘On’ all the time, and then ‘white-list’ (allow) only the things you want to allow.

This approach simply eliminates the whole issue of a child ‘changing the time or time zone’ to get around the downtime window… because there is no window… Downtime is ‘On’ 24x7.

Even this approach has its limitations. Instead of a simple switch that says ‘downtime on 24hrs’, you have to set a time window with a 1-minute gap between the values and make it sometime in the very early hours of the morning (like 0200).

So go to ‘Downtime’ and set the time window: (0200 or 2:00 am and 0159 or 1:59 am).

Now you can better control the restrictions/protections for things like Communications (only when Downtime is ‘on’ does apple give us the option to ‘restrict to specific contacts’).

Hope it helps.

I had the same problem and finally figured it out. You have to turn off the screen time password for the child's account from the parent device, then turn the password back on again.

This did not work for me at first. However, it did work eventually when I did this first:

-turn off all screen time for child, including passcode, app monitoring, time monitoring.

-turn off parent phone

-turn off child phone

-turn both phones back on

-set up screen time for child on parent phone (same as you did when child first got phone and you set them up on screen time. You will re-set password and all restrictions)

-THEN do all the steps listed above

It finally worked! On child’s phone

settings>general>date&time> time zone is greyed out!!! Finally!!!

First, under App Restrictions go to:

Location Services -> system services (bottom of list) -> toggle off “set time zone”.

Go back to location services main menu and toggle off “Location Services”.

Finally, set to “do not allow changes”.

that will work.

It worked! Someone posted that you need to turn the screen time off and on from the parent account and it worked! After all the other steps to turn off date and time changes. It worked!

Under settings > screen time > content & privacy restrictions > there is no "Location Services" option. On both my phone and computer the option is "Privacy / Share my location (allow/don't allow)". That's the only reference to location on that page that I can see when managing screen time for my children. Please provide additional guidance to what you have provided above. Apple has an extreme responsibility for the mental health of children and it is imperative that you work on proper working controls. The app is very buggy and hard to manage and fails to live up to Apple's promise to take proper and reasonable steps for the protection of children and teen mental health.

This is the same issue I have hit with my child’s iPad mini 5. The location services option is gone. I had the ability to adjust it before the iOS 16 changes so I’m assuming that messed things up. This prevents screentime from actually being effective. Apple please fix it and advise!

I have tried these steps multiple times but it does not stop the date and time from being changed. I do have these options and have followed the steps and even restarted, but the date and time can still be changed manually.

I have updated both phones to the latest software. I have restarted both devices. I tried using both phones (parental and child's). I tried toggling the "setting time zone" and untoggling. NOTHING WORKS!

I have also tried this on my own phone to set this restrictioin for myself using the screen time. This feature simply doesn't work!

I too have also experienced this problem with my child’s iPad. I have followed the instructions as outlined below and it is still possible for my child to change the Timezone thereby bypassing the screen time locks which is the main benefit to the screen time option in the iPad. Please fix this issue as a matter of priority