Screen Time: Apparent bug with Content & Privacy Restrictions

I've been using Screen Time since beta and it worked well. I turned if off for my child's device for a while, but now I want to turn it back on. I have done that, but now face a very strange problem.

Screen time enabled fine, this time, but now nothing I do on the parent device seems to be passed to the child device.

In addition, I can't seem to actually enable Content & Privacy restrictions. When I tap the slider, it turns green, but then immediately slides back to off.

I've tried turning Screen Time off and one again, and even leaving Family sharing entirely and rejoining.

Anyone know what else I can try?

iPhone 6s, iOS 12.0.1

Posted on Oct 28, 2018 8:32 AM

Top-ranking reply

Chuck Cheeze

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Feb 20, 2019 4:20 PM

I have dealt with this for a while and just stumbled onto the answer that solved it for me.

We have 4 iPhones, my Xs is the main one with the iCloud family account and controls. My wife has an X with no need for restrictions, my daughter has an Xr with restrictions that have had no issues like this one, and my son has an Xr that does have this problem, where the switch for turning on Content & Privacy Restrictions won't stay on.

Every time I've worked on this, I am working from my phone, where the restrictions should be setup and changed from. Today I decided to sign out of iCloud on my son's phone, the one with the issue, and sign back in. That did no good. From my phone, the switch still wouldn't stay on.

I decided I would at least turn on some restrictions from his phone. I went to Settings > General > Restrictions, but it wasn't there. I remembered that it's probably under Screen Time on his phone now as well, so I went to Settings > Screen Time.

Now, he also has an iPad Mini signed into the same account, but which he never uses, so whenever I go to Screen Time for him on my phone, I have to select his iPhone Xr device to see that data, because that is what he uses these days. I started to wonder if the dual devices had something to do with it. Back on his phone, in Screen Time, I noticed at the bottom of the main screen, a switch for "Share Across Devices", which, when turned on, will combine the screen time reports from both his iPhone and iPad into one total report. I enabled this switch. I DO NOT think this made the difference, but wanted to point it out incase it did affect anything.

On his phone, I chose Content & Privacy Restrictions, figuring I'd just set them up there, and once I chose it, entered my Restrictions password, then flipped the switch to on, and began looking through the settings, I noticed that on my phone, which still had the screen lit up and on the Content & Privacy Restrictions page for his phone, that the switch was on and the settings were updating as I changed them on his phone. I think what had happened, is that I previously had Restrictions setup on his phone, with a passcode, and after the update to iOS12 with the Content & Privacy Restrictions settings across iCloud Family accounts, his phone still respected the Restrictions passcode that had been previously setup. Once I entered that passcode on his phone, it released the control of the Content & Privacy Restrictions to my phone, the master family account phone.

So, that is how I got it working, hopefully that helps some of you.

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92 replies

Apr 21, 2019 8:55 PM in response to BugHelp

Hi, I found that after I power cycled the iPad, the problem came back again. You are right that resetting the settings does not work. It looks like I need to go back to making my child's device leave family sharing and setting screen time limits/restrictions directly on the device.

Aug 21, 2019 6:25 PM in response to Mr_Naz

I tried the last answer, with some mods because my situation is simpler - we have only two phones, one parent, one child.

(Sorry I can't find your handle, but it's the one where you used four fingers to tap on four phones simultaneously - you rock! The reboots - no help. I was very reluctant to reset all settings, and it turns out I didn't need to. So, thanks for your post!!)

This was working fine for many months, through at least a couple ios updates. Then a few days ago screen time was shut off. When it was turned back on (attempted to at least), I had this problem.

What worked - this is pretty fresh so I hope it sticks - is:

1) shut off screen time on both phones

2) shut off connectivity on parent's phone (wireless, bluetooth, cellular)

3) on child's phone, turn on screen time and down time. I modified the time to 10-5. Used my secret passcode there

4) on parent's phone, turn on child's screen time and down time. I modified the time to 11-5. Used that same secret passcode on this phone (does it matter? I dunno.) I also went into content and privacy restrictions, and turned off "allow" on Share my Location - this is a different thing I haven't done before, and I mention it because it may be relevant, the touching of some other setting.

5) waited a minute or so (again, relevant? not sure)

6) turned on parent's wireless, bluetooth, cellular.

And within a few seconds, the downtime refreshed to 10-5, which says to me that the child's phone's settings (icloud, whatever) rule the day. The "allow location" setting reverted back to on, also - the child's setting ruled. Trivia, doesn't truly matter, but it could help to debug stuff.

Interesting to note though that I was getting the "turn it on and it turns itself off again" behavior, with the Content & Privacy Restrictions button, when I went into the child's setting on my phone. I kept poking it, trying to turn it on, and eventually it started behaving as well, after about a minute.

Crossing my fingers that it stays working. This bug is a pain in the rear!

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Screen Time: Apparent bug with Content & Privacy Restrictions