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Cannot restore App Store app on child’s iPad

We are in an Apple family, and for period of time I had turned off my child’s ability to install apps. Last night, I wanted to restore that ability, yet no matter what I do the App Store app will not return to his home screen or App Library. The only way to get it to show up is to completely turn off content and privacy restrictions. I’ve gone through every option listed in content and privacy and turned them all to allow, and yet the App Store will not return unless the restrictions are completely shut off, resulting in my six-year-old being able to access his entire apple account which I do not want. I’ve tried resetting the home screen, restarting and resetting the entire iPad, and toggling allow install apps on and off repeatedly to no avail. If anyone has any suggestions I would love them. I am tech savvy and I have tried all of the things that have been suggested on the various websites online. I’ve even tried changing the settings from my own devices, but no change. Other apps will show up/disappear appropriately as they are toggled on/off (ex. Safari) but the App Store remains missing from the Home Screen and the App Library unless the the entire content and restriction section is toggled off.

iPad (10th generation)

Posted on Jun 7, 2024 4:48 AM

Top-ranking reply

Katharine0785 Author

Level 1

59 points

Posted on Jun 7, 2024 11:14 AM

Interestingly, I notice now when I toggle install apps to allow and go out of the settings, the App Store will reappear for a quick second on the Home Screen/App Library, then disappears again and can’t be searched. Something just isn’t working right. Here’s a screen shot of every app on the device, there’s nothing that should be causing this.

View in context

19 replies

Jun 13, 2024 8:44 AM in response to Katharine0785

So an odd thing just happened, my son requested a game and the request appeared on my watch, and NOT on my phone 😂 couldn’t be found anywhere. My watch isn’t cellular, only Bluetooth, and all my notifications are mirrored from my phone. I don’t even know how I would change those notifications, do they fall under App Store notifications or something else? Whatever the case, the notification coming to my watch and being absolutely unavailable on my phone just solidifies to me that this is something messed up on Apple’s side and there’s likely not a fix until they decide to make one, unfortunately.

Lotus85

Level 1

8 points

Jul 11, 2024 4:56 PM in response to Sarah_AUmom

My grandson is Autistic and we’re having the same problem with the disappeared App Store. We’ve had IPads for years and this is a first! It’s now happening on my granddaughter’s and my own IPad. Nothing has worked.

Jul 11, 2024 5:10 PM in response to Katharine0785

Hey everyone! I’m so sorry we’re all having this problem. I don’t remember if I mentioned, but my 6 year old is also autistic so I feel that frustration everyone has with this!

So I might have a solution, but I haven’t had a chance to test it on the problem device yet. My other son also has an iPad which we recently upgraded. His old iPad had the content restrictions on. When I set up the new iPad, instead of importing from iCloud, I set it up as a new iPad. I still signed him in, but since I didn’t import anything, it basically wiped all the settings, including the screen time settings. Again, this was not on the device with the issue, but it has me wondering if I do the same on that device (erase, then setup as a new iPad and don’t import from iCloud) if it will be a “do over” on the screen time settings and restore the App Store.

I haven’t tried it mostly because he has a ton of stuff downloaded for Minecraft and I feel bad making him go through and download it all again, so I’ve just been remotely turning the content restrictions off when we need the App Store then turning them back on. Not ideal, but works for now.

Anyway I think this might work, based on my other child’s iPad. Setting it up new, it completely reset everything to do with screen time, which seems like it should fix the issue we are all having. Unfortunately I know it isn’t super convenient to completely wipe and set back up a device, but if anyone is able to try it, let us know if it works! And if I get annoyed enough, I’ll do it and report back here.

Lotus85

Level 1

8 points

Jul 11, 2024 4:58 PM in response to Katharine0785

My grandson is on the Spectrum and he loves his IPad, this is very frustrating. I’m taking our devices to the Apple Store.

Cannot restore App Store app on child’s iPad