Screen Time: Apparent bug with Content & Privacy Restrictions

Agree more tickets needed I have had this issue since December and recently created another Apple ID and transferred my kids accounts all worked well but that’s not my main Apple ID very frustrating

Glad someone else is experiencing this problem thought I was going mad! My problem started when I needed to log into another Apple device to verify my daughters account, can’t remember why now this happened. This in its self caused a problem as being a child account I then could sign her out of this device (my iPad) so I deleted her account from our family sharing. From then on I haven’t been able to sort out her account. If I set up screen time from her phone it sets but I can’t see it and as soon as I do it from my devices I can’t set downtime and the same problem with the content slider. I have 2 children on my family account and the problem is only with this one?

Help please

I have the same problem with one of my kids' iPhone but the Screen Time works well with the other kid's device. Talked to the Apple Support, tried to logout of both my kid's and my iCloud accounts, to reset both my kid's and my iPhone settings, and even to erase both iPhones and set it as new, nothing worked. But throughout the time, it worked for my other kid's Screen Time.

When Ianworks mentioned about logging out from other devices, it reminded me that I had ever use my iPad to manage the Screen Time. Thus I tried to logout of iCloud accounts from all my iOS devices and my kid's iPhone, hoping that would work. But have to report back, it doesn't. Waiting for Apple to resolve this.

Thanks Ianworks to share the experience anyway.

Screentime is turning out to be a Sales gimmick used to shift phones, but the feature doesn't work, and due to the Apple legal contract for your phone, you essentially waive any Legal right that you may have otherwise had with Apple.

My local carrier convinced us that we'd be able to control/monitor the Kids time on their phone which was why we ditched their old style phones to lock in on the new iPhone contracts... big mistake. Screentime does not work as expected. On one phone I can't even enable it, on another, it's piecemeal - Safari appears to ignore Screentime settings altogether, games such as fortnight appear to be overlooked.

The case has been with Apple for other a month, but its looking like nothing's getting done.

What can be done to get some attention from Apple ?

I've been engaging the Apple Support team over the past few months on this one. We made some progress - but along the way had some up's and down's - for example, on one case I found that they'd simply added all applications to the "Always allowed tab" for one Kid, but for the other, I couldn't add/remove any... the fix is sporadic, and now for example, I find I cant enable "Content & Privacy Restrictions" for one of my Kids....

Apple Support is really lacking (in this neck of the woods they seem to just have 1 person who works part time) and has left me in the lurch so often as to the current activity on this issue... They've gone quite on me, this past week... which is perhaps due to the Facetime bug - but that would make you wonder if they have only 1 developer left in apple working on all the bug fixes...

I am beginning to wonder if Apples' claims to ISO standards of quality should be reviewed by the Standards body itself ?

Perhaps this really needs to be escalated to the ISO Standards body itself since Apple won't listen, and continues to hide behind their Legal clause that simply states "We the purchaser has no claim upon Apple whatsoever"...

My Carrier here in Japan, "Softbank", sold me the phones based on their conviction that I would have full control over my Kids usage of their phones... clearly that turned out not to be the case. One has to wonder if there is legal case against the Carrier. And if I can use this as leverage to get the matter resolved. Surely one can not Sell a product saying it will do X when it won't do that. I know that in the UK this would be a breach of the "Sale of Goods Act", though in other Countries, such as here in Japan... I am not 100% certain.

That said, the other problem I had with my new iPhone XR... namely a defective microphone, which the apple Support teams kept complaining to me about when they called me, and couldn't hear me themselves, until I held the phone horizontally in front of my mouth.... was recently resolved by getting a new phone - but the time it took, doing pointless tests with their "Geniuses" wasn't helpful... and indeed when I went first into the Store after the appointment that had been booked for me, the Geniuses were not apparently aware of that issue! So much for issue tracking and communication.

It looks like once ISO Standards have been assigned to a Company, they can't be removed. Maybe I am wrong... anyone care to clarify, since at present, I think Apple needs to be placed under Review status.

Yes, I am clearly frustrated over these recent Support issues, they really let the Company down, and to rub salt into the wounds - with the newly announced price reductions on the phones I've spent so much money upon... does not help the situation ( the timing of the switch between Phones was due to a contract renewal with my former Carrier and SoftBank.. who convinced us that it would be cheaper to go to them with the newer iPhones and Screentime functionality than stay upon the old mix of phones we had).

Any luck for anyone? My daughter got a new iPhone 8 and when reset up screen time on it, I am able to see her screen time from my same iPhone 8, as well as set individual app limits, but am now not able to schedule downtime, always allowed apps, or content and privacy restrictions (toggle switch moves back within a couple seconds). My son's iPad family sharing screen time was still working (not a new device), but as of yesterday, now same issue with it (after signed off temporarily and then signed back on)! Have gone through the reset issue with senior advisor and supposedly now the engineers are working on the back end of it. Supposed to hear back more tomorrow, but the advisor tells me that this isn't something that she's heard about. So frustrated as really count on this and now that Apple has developed this parental control software they will not allow OurPact to offer it's apps on the iOS platform....so am in the position of needing to wait for a fix from Apple....unless any one else here can solve?

Thanks for the suggestion. Just tried and was hopeful, but no luck! Have been working on this issue with Apple for 3 months now. Multiple reports to the engineers and still no luck. Really frustrating as very little ability to help manage my daughter’s iPhone and sons’s iPad screen time (app limits work, but not content & privacy or downtime).

I've been trying to figure this out since last fall, too.

I have the same problem, Screen Time's Downtime, App Limits, and Always Allowed work, but the Content & Privacy slider toggles off after a brief delay.

To try and fix, I have cleared out old devices from my apple account , and removed old devices from my child's to no avail.

To add some additional info to the thread, this is one of three children (and a twin), and the other two's Screentime Content & Privacy settings work just fine! Short of completely resetting some phones and iPads, I don't know what else to try.

If the apple technical advisor could not help you, see if they will submit your problem to software development with the problem captured in some sort of diagnostic log. I am not sure that I will be able to trouble shoot this problem at my scheduled callback time since my kid is hiding the ipad.

Same bug - when setting content & privacy restrictions for child account, it toggles off right after I have turned it on. Unacceptable, Apple!

Spoke with Apple Support, replicated issue after resetting phone to Factory defaults. Issue passed to Developers. Hopefully, will be resolved soon.

Unfortunately, iOS 12.3 which was just released still did not fix this problem with screen time settings. Apple technical support had me capture a log for the software engineers to analyze.

Nice it worked for you, sadly I’ve through all the device reset stuff with the support team and to no avail. Like an earlier poster , when commas are down , the settings stay, but as soon as they’re back on , i the settings switch off within 2-3 secs . Possibly something on iCloud associated with the Apple ID.

Dear Everyone:

I had the same problem as everyone above has identified. It was driving me nuts, particularly since it had worked for 6 days and just suddenly stopped yesterday. While I can't say this will work for you, I can tell you what I did last night to solve the problem of the Content & Privacy slider which kept sliding back to off when I turned it all.

First of all, let me say I tried about 6 different things before fixing it -- including signing out and signing back in to all iCloud accounts.

My situation:

2 new iPads with new child iCloud accounts that WAS able to manage properly for the first week I had them.

1 relatively new iPhone XS Max

I took the approach of decoupling every iCloud enabled device that I could from my account (which is the primary on our family account)

First I (permanently) signed out of iCloud on my kids old iPad.

Then I signed out of my kids iCloud accounts on both of their new devices.

Then I signed out of my iCloud account on my new phone.

Then -- and this is what I think worked -- I signed out of iCloud on my old iPhone 6 -- this phone had been off for a while. Do not know if that is important but this seems to be the difference as I had already tried signing in and out of my kids new devices earlier. The phone was still on and functional just doesn't receive calls.

Finally I signed back in to my NEW phone, signed back into my kids iCloud accounts on their new iPads, and the problem was gone. I was able to get consistent behavior again FROM MY NEW PHONE; i.e. if I hit the slider to green to keep restrictions in place it works.

Do not know if this will help everyone or not. I spend 2 hours trying to figure this out yesterday.

Good luck.

The case has been with Apple for other a month, but its looking like nothing's getting done.

What can be done to get some attention from Apple ?

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