Background App Refresh grayed out

I'm happy to report that I finally found the reason my Background App Refresh was grayed out and was able to "fix" it after remembering my previous Passcode I forgot I had to change.

apostolicdoug Got me started on the right path except the setting I needed to change was under Settings/Screen Time/Content&Privacy Restrictions/Background App Activities. This last menu item was set to Don't Allow. Once I set it to Allow my Background App Refresh Menu worked normally.

Ironically what started all of this was after reading an article about limiting which apps were allowed to refresh in the background for better battery life. Although some indicated they were turned on under the grayed out screen this other setting apparently had already blocked all apps from refreshing in the background. 😁

Thanks apostolicdoug and Sberman

Thanks for the idea but I checked and have Low Power Mode turned off. Just to experiment I tried turning Low Power Mode on and then went to the Background App Refresh page and indeed the overall Background App Refresh switched from being on to turned off but screen still grayed out. Then I turned the Low Power Mode back off and rechecked the Background App Refresh page and the overall Background App Refresh was turned back on with everything grayed out.

Out of curiosity I checked the Background App Refresh on my iPad (2018) with iOS12 and everything works on my iPad as it should. Very strange.

I spoke with Apple Support over the phone and she suspects that it is a software issue. If so my two options were; 1) Reset to factory settings (I’d really prefer not to do) or 2) Wait for the next iOS update. We already had a minor update since my original post that did not fix my issue.

Unless anyone has any other ideas I will have to do the reset to factory settings but I haven’t been able to back up my iPhone 6+ via iTunes since I got it....

Hmm I forgot about this but it brings up another seperate issue I have run into.

At no point in time do I recall setting a separate Screen Time Passcode ever or being asked to. I assumed the requested Passcode would be the same one I use to log into the phone itself and make other critical changes under settings but that Passcode is rejected as the wrong Passcode. I see no way to change my Screen Time Passcode (that I have no knowledge of ever setting) without entering the current unknown Passcode for Screen Time.

This sounds like a worthy path to explore but I seem to have hit a roadblock. Is there a default Screen Time Passcode if you have never set one to start with?

Thanks so much for the response but still have no memory of setting or using any passcode besides the one I use to log onto the phone. Neither do I recall setting up any kind of restrictions as I am the only one that ever uses the phone.