Screen Time for iPhone, iPad and iPod is not able to recognize individual apps being used. We can block all apps or no apps so when you turn on features like the Daily Limit and Bedtime Blocker they will be enabled for all apps.
We would like to be able to give parents more control over what apps are included in the Screen Time features, but this a restriction of Apple’s platform and until they change their policy we can’t improve this feature.
8 comments
Join the conversationJason Ward - 30/06/2016
Paid for the 12 month premium and then discovered that it is TOTALLY USELESS on iPad/iphone. Very annoyed and disappointed. Nowhere on the app store did you say that it TOTALLY USELESS on Apple. False advertising in my opinion and very annoyed that I spent $85 on this crap.
Oli - 30/06/2016
I’m really sorry to hear that Jason. We do try and make it clear that you can’t select apps on Apple devices and there is a 14 day free trial for parents, so it’s not something that we’re trying to hide or advertise other than it is. As far as we’ve found there aren’t any Parental Control app on Apple that can block specific apps, so it’s not an industry standard. If you saw this feature advertised somewhere please let me know and I’ll make sure it’s updated.
It sounds like Screen Time won’t work for you, if that’s the case and you subscribed through iTunes, then check out this page to see how to cancel and this page for how to claim a refund through iTunes.
Jon Gabrielson - 15/06/2016
Have you considered a jailbreak version of screentime for the ipad? I would gladly jailbreak my ipad if I could get per app restrictions. As it is, screentime is pretty useless on the ipad. The other killer feature would be individual user profiles so multiple kids could share 1 ipad. Would it not be possible for screentime to run as a filemanager on top of IOS where it never exits and it becomes the defacto OS?
Oli - 15/06/2016
Hi Jon, we have thought about a jailbreak version however that would only be useful for a relatively small amount of parents and there are others that would be put off by the technical side of jailbreaking their devices, or the possibility of bricking their device. So I’m afraid it’s not something we’re going to be looking into.
We are however going to continue working hard to improve the iOS version of Screen Time, we’ve made some big improvements lately and we’re proud of being the only iOS parental control app that offers a Daily Limit. Creating multiple user profiles is something that’s a bit difficult for an app to do plus it looks like this is a feature that Apple themselves are working on, so we really need to see where they are planning to go with that feature before we make a commitment.
cwclifford - 28/02/2016
“NOTE: We would like to be able to give parents more control over what apps are included in the Screen Time features, but this a restriction of Apple’s platform and until they change their policy we can’t improve this feature”
Then how do Kidslox restrictions control access to Safari, the App Store, Movies/TV Shows and all apps based on ratings? It’s got much more granular control that you state is impossible. The only reason I am trying Screen Time is because you offer a Daily Limit and Kidslox does. I paid for the whole year to get access to the Premium options but it’s not working for me yet.
Oli - 29/02/2016
Hi Craig, I’m sorry if we made it seem like there aren’t other restrictions that you can use on Apple devices, we were trying to let parents know that the same functionality that we have on Android devices (the ability to block specific apps) isn’t available on Apple devices. Even though you can block based on Age restrictions there isn’t a way for the parent to choose which app is blocked. We are working on finding ways around that though and we hope that it’ll be possible in the near future.
Screen Time also blocks access to Safari and restricts access to the app store during a blocked period, so we don’t want to make it seem like these things are impossible.
Brett - 06/01/2016
I will be getting rid of screen time…..absolutely best app ever on Android…..useless on iphone.
Oli - 08/01/2016
Sorry to hear that it didn’t work out for you, there are other parents that are using the Apple version and are happy with it. It’s not as secure as the Android version and would struggle to be because of the way that Apple’s platform works but we’ll keep trying to figure out ways around that.
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