Screen Time Downtime blocking "Always Allowed" Safari & Chrome

Hi everyone,

I'm experiencing a frustrating and illogical bug with Screen Time's Downtime feature.

The Problem:

Even though I have Safari and Google Chrome added to my SETTINGS > SCREEN TIME > ALWAYS ALLOWED list, their web browsing functionality is being blocked during my scheduled Downtime.

•⁠ ⁠The app icons themselves are not greyed out on the home screen.

•⁠ ⁠Tapping on the app opens it, but any attempt to browse the internet is immediately blocked by a "Time Limit" message.

What I've noticed:

This has been a problem for me for some time with Safari. The issue with Google Chrome started after ios26 update. This behavior seems to completely undermine the purpose of the "Always Allowed" feature. Then what’s the point of settings these apps as ALWAYS ALLOWED?

Has anyone else experienced this, or does anyone have a fix?

Thanks for any help!

iPhone 16, iOS 26

Posted on Sep 17, 2025 7:32 AM

Top-ranking reply

tranzhuman

Level 1

24 points

Posted on Oct 6, 2026 8:58 PM

I finally got this fixed ! It was driving us nuts for our kids ipads during school even after completely wiping ipads, upgrading to ios27, deleting all downtime controls and installing the new parental controls on all devices.

Had an hour + long call with support team. Steps we did were as follows for all devices:

- Manual check for update. There was one for ios 27.0.1

-After update force restarted devices again

- In date time and time settings disabled 24 hour time

-Changed region to the same one on all devices (1 was incorrect)

-Made sure language was English

-Double checked there were no VPNs

-Disabled Focus

-Disabled time sharing in screentime

-Finally signed out of Apple account and signed back in on the parents device

-Force restarted all devices

After these steps it seems everything is mostly working as intended

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Screen Time Downtime blocking "Always Allowed" Safari & Chrome

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