Screen time not blocking youtube

i was having the same issue. Snap, insta, YouTube and safari still available during downtime. And the time limit I set for social media apps was not working either. Tried a bunch of things, but what worked for now is to: Turn off screen time, go to “Settings”, “General”, at the very bottom of the screen select “Reset” and choose “Reset all Settings”. (This doesn’t lose any data.) Once phone has Reset go back and redo the screentime limits. When I did this at least snap, insta and YouTube were blocked during downtime like they should be. Safari still available. Not perfect but better than it was.

I had the same issue and have found the solution which was relatively simple. YouTube gets automatically added to the Always allowed apps list which overrides any limits you place on apps. Once you remove YouTube from the always allowed list, your limits will work. To remove it, go to Screen Time, click on "Always Allowed" and tap on the red dot next to YouTube in the list and select "remove". You limits for YouTube should now be working.

I hope this helps!

Here’s a fun one. The blocking capability IS working on my son’s iPhone, but like all kids, they find ways to circumvent. I would hear my son in the bathroom watching youtube when I know and tested it was blocked. He was opening the messaging app, which allows you to upload files or attachments. One of the options to upload in Messages is YouTube. When you click the icon, it shows what videos you’ve watched most recently, and provides a search bar to search YouTube directly. And in screen time, the messaging app is essential to allow screen time to work. I limited him to 15 minutes of using the messaging app. Just hope he never needs to text me in an emergency situation. I’ll tell you, my kids are going to earn their doctorates in finding ways to watch youtube on anything with internet access.

I have “all apps” limited under the general settings at 1.5 hours.... they break through w/ the YouTube “glitch” and still watch... I found the toggle “include web info” turned ON plus going through their recent online activity and finding the individual topics YouTube/ Instagram all the glitch ones they still find a way to access and put time limits on those individual areas as well.... since I have done that: poof NO MORE UNLIMITED BREAK THROUGHS. I had the main thing restricted to “all apps” but they found loopholes... now with each restriction added as I see which site is visited in their lists, adding more individual restrictions has SOLVED all the extra screen time they were sneaking. Apple does it a bit, but parents need to go through each individual item and add restrictions that’s THE ONLY WAY to solve the issue. Include safari/ web browsing in the toggle and hint for the pesky sites you also were hoping Apple would have restricted but lagged on helping with. Add limits to each web item and your issues get solved... except now my phone blows up in requesting additional time but at least I know I finally won and am in control. That’s the proof knowing you did it & solved the loopholes being done. Kids get annoyed it’s blocked (verbally showing annoyed) and s teen time requests start coming blasting through (bc the block was successful)

hope this helps!!

Hi. Not often I comment on these but in this case I found a work around On this issue that at least has worked for me. I too have had the same problem. Tried to limit my son’s YouTube time but try as I might it kept being active.

Tried the suggestions given by others to turn screen time off then back on and that didn’t work either (not for me anyhow). What did finally work was this. Every time I’d tried to set it up, it had been done from my own phone (I.e through family share). I’d always done it this way because then I can remote monitor his usage from my device (I.e how the system is supposed to work). But each time I got the same problem as everyone’s been having.

After many failed attempts to sort it something made me wonder about setting it up Screen time directly on his phone rather then via mine. So I gave it a try. Setup downtime, app limits, everything directly, put in a parental password and voila, YouTube is now locked down tighter than Fort Knox. Yes I lose the remote monitoring function but I can always look on his handset to see what he’s using. At lease everything appears to be working now (or not working as we want it), and it’s password protected.

I’m wondering if the bug in the system is more family share related rather than with screen time.

Obviously I can’t guarantee this solution will work for everyone but it’s worth a try to see how you get on.

Good luck.

Add an age restriction which will block YouTube ALL the time. YouTube is a +17 app. I just changed my 5yr old to +4 apps only. BAM no more YouTube!

You need to go into their history and block what they are using w a time individually. Apple doesn’t do it well enough, but digging through and not relying on apples “all apps” is the way to go. Limit YouTube, limit safari all by them selves and be sure to include “website data” is toggled. Apple “all apps” is not reliable but if you go through the individual parts they use and set limits on each one—- THATS YOUR HELP. I have 5 kids. They did the same thing until I dig deeper trying for sanity of their loopholes... this worked. They were mad as heck it’s now blocked w their time and they request screen time so I know it’s working. This is your help/ trust me. It’s WORKING FINALLY the way “screen time” was intended

What some others suggested worked for me: disable/remove screen time for my kid using my phone, restart his phone, then re-enable screen time for him again using my phone. Rebooting his phone was key: I first tried without the reboot and his YouTube was still always enabled.

When re-enabling screen time remember to drill into the Content and Privacy Restrictions menu in screen time. Apple inexplicably defaults to allowing access to adult websites.

This is what worked for me in order to block YouTube the app and YouTube the website on safari. Once I was able to block the app again it automatically worked in safari, I took no extra steps to block the website for downtime. 

It took me 3 HOURS to finally block YouTube again because I know for sure it use to block since I was able to unblock the app on Christmas when it first locked for the downtime settings. 

So what happened in my case was that I put in the passcode for the screen time in front of my child and set a passcode that he knew (I know stupid me, I was out smarted by an 8 yr old) and that one time I put in the code I allowed for it to extend the YouTube app usage for an ENTIRE DAY, the settings allow 1 minute, 15 minutes, or a whole day. 

Since my child knew the passcode he kept unlocking YouTube for an entire day. So at 7am on 1/8 he unlocked it so when the downtime was to start at 9pm that same day YouTube technically still had another 10 hours left for the “extra day” that was already allowed. 

I tried everything but wiping out the entire iPad, (which I was going to do tomorrow after work, if I didn’t figure this out)So I deleted YouTube, reset the settings, blocked the website(which just blocked the website completely), changed the limit per day, turned off and on screen time, a million times, restart both my phone and the iPad, NOTHING WORKED. 

I had a hunch that it not being blocked had to do with that one extension this morning. So my next and FINAL idea was to change the date and time on the iPad. In order to do that I had to turn of all the screen time settings on my phone and the iPad in order for the iPad to allow me to change the date. I changed the date on my phone as well as the iPad. I fast forward the date exactly 24 hours so to 11:30pm 1/9 instead of 1/8 in my case. Then I turned the screen time back on from my from my phone and LO AND BEHOLD YOUTUBE WAS BLOCKED. The app was blocked and so was the website! Also my time and date went back to normal on both my iPhone and the iPad on it’s own once I enable the screen time. 

I had already changed the passcode this morning once I realized that my first attempt at changing the passcode was unsuccessful. So I’m reality the root of all this for me was that my child had the passcode and was extending the usage for an entire day, hence the app not blocking at the set downtime. 

I hope that this might help at least one of you in here. Maybe at least one of your children have the passcode and you don’t even know it and they are doing the same thing my child was doing.

Being frustrated to the bone on this,

I have turned off the Screentime via Parental control via my personal iPhone.

And then turned on the Screentime (as Parent) on the phones of my children.

Then limited the use of YouTube and the social apps which seems to work for now.

As a parent you need to be very diligent in this as there is many ways to access YouTube via other Apps, think Safari and Chrome and Messages and even educational apps, so it is like a continuous patching process.

Best way is to confiscate the phones from time to time and look for the holes by examining the screentime per App.

The children will be incentivized like **** to to find any opportunity to work around.

Also be very very careful never to show your passkey to the children, you have no idea how far they will go for that.

I am amazed that Apple is getting away with this for so long as their claims on Screentime are simply misleading parents in believing they can control the highly addictive use of smart phones to children’s brains with all its negative consequences.

Who is going to take Apple to court on this?

Who is going to address this in their shareholders meeting?

There are a few ways to “cure” the screen time problem.

You can choose to completely block access to YouTube on your child’s device by:

• go to screen time on your phone and choose your child
• Go to “content and privacy restrictions”
• click on “web content” and scroll down
• chose “never allowed” and type the web address of the website your child should not access: YouTube, tumblr, etc.
• choose

if you would like to put a daily time limit to YouTube or other websites mostly used by your child, you can can do this:

• go to “screen time” and choose your child
• Click on “all devices”
• choose “last 7 days” and scroll down.
• see under “most used” how much time your child spends on certain websites
• click on “you tube” and scroll down to “limits”
• “Add limit”

good luck!

Same here. Until there's a fix, I deleted the YouTube app and told my daughter she could watch YouTube videos thru the Google app. ScreenTime works with the Google app. Ironically, I couldn't get ScreenTime to block Safari, either. So I removed her ability to use Safari and installed the Google app in its place.

You can still use OurPact! Apple deleted the app from the App Store but you can load the controls by plugging the phone into your computer and pairing it. Then you have to use the site on safari on your phone to control their apps and such. I have recently decided to see if I could just use Screen Time and dump ourPact when I came across this problem (YouTube and Instagram don’t shut off during downtime). Apple needs to fix this if they aren’t going to allow other apps that do it in the App Store.

I asked my 10 year old son and he said that as long as he keeps watching Utube and doesn’t leave their continuous feed of “watch next” it won’t trigger the Apple screen time limit.

Coincidence? I think Utube (and Instagram) have found a way around Apple screen time that was cutting into their profits. Apple to the rescue....PLEASE.