Screen Time Buggy and SLOW!

I have the same issue. Screentime is extremely slow.

you mention that it also resets to blank, I suspect -that- is not the case.

screentime takes extremely long to load, if you wait (this can take more then a minute!) until it is loaded (you know its loaded when date/time under the graph is of “now”) then the settings are there, if you click thru to the settings earlier then they appear empty…

”the good thing” is that that brings the issue down to it beiing extremely slow…

it hapens on wifi and mobile, it happens on different wifi. Both my wif and 5g connection are plenty fast and I have no other issues with connections or speed. Changing dns servers does not help either.

Firstly the whole thing is way to slow and that must be an apple backend server thing..

its also not helping that the thing does not update in the background (and yes: settings are correct, toggling them does not work and battery saving is also off).

furthermore this has been the vase for months in my case. I currently running the beta but the issue was the same whencI was on the latest regular release.

My kids have SE2 phones, I have a 14pro and my wife had an 11pro.

issue arises for me and her and with both kids.

Yes, Screen time is absolutely a NIGHTMARE to use. And always has been for me. Here's what I have to do. Open up screentime in the settings. Then completely close the settings app (swipe up from the bottom of the screen and pause in the center of the screen, then swipe up on the settings app to close it).

Now open the settings app again and go do your screentime stuff. It will still be slow as molasses, but this forces screentime to reconnect/refresh and helps speed it up for some reason. I have to do this before changing settings for each person in screentime though.

APPLE! please fix your bugs!

If it matters, i have re-wiped the 2 iPads I was trying to get this to work on and it's mostly working for now. Some of the time limits are a little weird since I'm trying to have them have x amount of time for general use, but extra time for texting friends. It's not always good at telling the difference.

but wiping and restarting as new device helped. You can't restore from a backup - must setup as new device.

I stumbled across this solution myself and can confirm it “works”. Quotes because it isn’t a solution it’s a pita workaround. I found you need to have the same version ios on the managed and parent devices. Never could get my wife as an approver though..

I too, am sick of this, it's been so bad for so long, I cannot believe they are ok with leaving it this way.

My main issue is the client/server way they have designed it. If you toggle a setting, like changing the time downtime is set to activate, you can change the time in the interface, but it will not actually change it in the backend. You have to leave it on that screen for an abritrary amount of time between 10 seconds and 20 minutes, and at some point it may or may not 'take'. So you can toggle something, back out of the interface, go back to it and the setting will not have changed.

I think my kids will have grown up and left home by the time they fix this ! :-( >:-(

Thank you Forceblast!! You saved my day. Perfect post. Perfectly described . Now I know I am correct when I ask the same questions. Super frustrating that we can have such a flawed key functionality in place. I actually try to use it to its full abilities but I have seen these issue for a long time now.

Many are coming up with all other misleading responses that just distract everyone of the real issue.

So, my kids become adults before Apple will solve the issue.

Same issues here. Primary for me has been the limits don’t stick. Interesting that when I wiped the target devices (2 iPads), it worked. 2 weeks later and one is still working correctly and the other has gone back to limits not sticking. The delay in refresh has never been fixed.

[Edited by Moderator] 

Yes, the activity statistics take a LONG time to load. @Apple….the current general consensus is that a page should not take more than 2-3 seconds to load. This info is taking a minute or more. Please optimize.

I have this same exact problem, it has always been like this (for over a year now). And it is like this on all my kids devices, which is an iPad, iPhone 13 and an iPhone 12, all on the latest iOS versions. I myself use an iPhone 14 pro.

On top of it being extremly slow, it switches between sending me an message and screentime actually sending an notification when my kids request more time for an app.

This is actually so frustrating that I'm thinking about going back to android and use Google Family link instead, I used that prior to this and it worked flawless.

Absolutely an issue and has been for a long long time. I get that it’s a ton of data to crunch, but that’s not an excuse. My family has hemorrhaged thousands and thousands of dollars to Apple over the years. This needs to be fixed for real.

Nothing even syncs for me (and my family's devices) on Screen Time.

Ever. (And yes, I've tried everything, except for bothering to call Apple, which everyone here seems to confirm is nothing but a frustrating dead end when it comes to Screen Time.

"Nightmare" is the right word for this "service".

I found a solution! Our kids are now 14 and 16, and after years if struggle and trying different things, they can now self-regulate their device usage enough that it’s no longer a factor with their sleep or negatively impacting their behavior.

So I think we should all really thank Apple for not fixing the software they promised us as part of our expensive purchases. Essentially this forced us to arrive at the outcomes we wanted through classic parenting techniques that were 5x as hard and potentially damaging for both us and our kids - but hey, it worked! It’s a new ‘tough love’ customer strategy that encourages doing things the hard way to build character and minimize an over-reliance on technology. It’s similar to the eco-friendly strategy of no longer including power bricks with purchases (we’ll just screw the earth by buying them elsewhere) or defaulting our power settings to “save electricity”.

But hey, my iPhone now has a USB-C charger, so clearly the time and money NOT spent on addressing this years-broken parental control issue has gone to good use.

Same here. It is unbelievable how slow and buggy the Family control options are, it takes from 30secs to few minutes for controls to refresh and show current status or persist changed value. As a long time Microsoft Family user, I can only wonder why Apple cannot implement a working Family safety functionality. Shame. Shame.

Screen time is a literal turd Sandwhich. I can’t even imagine what goes on in that company. It may be cash heavy, and worth over a trillion…which is 100% from Jobs energy. Cook has sat at the helm of a massive, exponential down-curve in quality, complete and utter lack of innovation, while clinging to the premium price points. Apple’s Operating systems are/were amazing. I’m a sysadmin, for over 17 years and while I would never own an Apple desktop, MacOS is clearly superior to Windows for a portable computer/laptop. iOS was great OS, some people like the proprietary atmosphere, and don’t care to “power-use” their phone. But it really has gotten worse over the years. I can’t imagine the algorithms/code/machine learning l/probably spaghetti code for the keyboard, but it is progressively worse now than 2014. But screw all that, everyone by a $3500 7-years-late-to-market, not-even-a-vr-headset while we keep un-proving iOS…

I have the exact same issues including the app limit resets. Frustrating.