Apple Screen Time Parental Controls: The iOS 27 Setup Guide
Apple rebuilt its parental controls this fall. Here’s how to set them up on your kid’s iPhone, which settings actually matter, and where the controls run out.
To set up Apple Screen Time parental controls, put your child in your Family Sharing group with their own Child Account, then open Settings on your iPhone, tap Family, tap their name and tap Screen Time. From there you set Time Allowances (daily budgets), Screen Time Schedules (when apps work), who they can contact, and a passcode that locks it all in place.
That’s the short version. The longer version matters because Apple changed a lot in iOS 27. Downtime and App Limits, the two settings every older guide tells you to use, have been replaced on the kids’ side. If you’re hunting for them, you’re reading an out-of-date tutorial. Including, possibly, one you bookmarked last year.
What Are Apple Screen Time Parental Controls?
They’re the controls built into iPhone, iPad and Mac that let a parent manage a child’s device from their own. No extra app, no subscription. According to Apple’s parental controls page, the iOS 27 version covers five areas:
- Apps & Websites: block or allow specific apps and sites, plus Ask to Buy and Ask to Browse approvals.
- Allowed Contacts and Always Allowed: decide who your child can message, call and FaceTime, and approve anyone new.
- Time Allowances and Screen Time Schedules: how long, and when.
- Content & Privacy Restrictions: age ratings for music, movies and books, and locks on settings like Share My Location.
- Communication Safety: on-device detection of nudity, gore or violence in photos, videos and live FaceTime calls.
Some of this is on by default. Ask to Browse is switched on for children under 13 and Limit Adult Websites for children under 18, though the exact ages vary by country.
Before You Start: Family Sharing and a Child Account
Everything runs through Family Sharing. Your child needs their own Apple Account, set up as a Child Account, and it has to sit inside your family group. A shared account, or your old Apple ID handed down with the phone, will cause problems you’ll be untangling for months.
The second requirement catches people out. The new controls need every device used by a parent, guardian or managed child in the last 90 days to be running version 27 of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS or visionOS, per Apple’s upgrade guide. That forgotten iPad in a drawer counts. To find stragglers, go to Settings, tap Family, then View Family Devices. Devices that can’t update show up under Legacy Devices and keep the iOS 26 controls.
Once everything is updated, open Settings, tap Family and tap Get Started. You can carry over your existing settings or start fresh. I’d start fresh. Old Downtime rules don’t map neatly onto the new schedule system, and a clean setup takes about 15 minutes.
How to Set Up Apple Screen Time Parental Controls Step by Step
Do this from your own iPhone, not your child’s. Apple recommends it, and it means the settings live somewhere your kid can’t poke at them.
Open your child’s settings
Go to Settings, tap Family, then tap your child’s name and tap Screen Time. Follow the onscreen prompts to turn on parental controls.
Set Time Allowances
Tap Time Allowances, then the Add button. Entertainment, Games and Social Media come preloaded, with age-based starting points Apple says are based on expert research. Set a total daily budget, then drag each category up or down. Apps without a category get their own allowance under Additional Time Allowances.
Build a Screen Time Schedule
Tap Screen Time Schedule, turn on Schedule, then Add Schedule and pick the days. Apple gives you built-in windows like Before School, School and After School, and you choose which app categories work in each. Make a separate weekend schedule. Add a custom window for soccer practice if you need one.
Choose Always Allowed apps and contacts
Pick the people and apps that work no matter what the schedule says. You, obviously. Maybe Maps and a school app. Keep the list short, or it turns into a back door.
Lock it with a Screen Time passcode
Tap Passcode & Management, then Lock Screen Time Settings, and enter a four-digit code. Set it from your own device, per Apple’s passcode guide. You’ll get a notification any time the code is used on your child’s device, which is a nice tripwire.
Old Names vs New Names
If you’re comparing notes with another parent, or following an older video, this table lines up the closest matches.
| Closest setting in iOS 26 and earlier | iOS 27 | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Downtime | Screen Time Schedule | Which apps work at which times of day |
| App Limits | Time Allowances | Daily time budget per category |
| Communication Limits | Allowed Contacts | Who your child can talk to |
| Always Allowed | Always Allowed | Apps and people exempt from limits |
One genuinely useful addition: you can now pause your child’s device, allow unlimited use, or change the day’s schedule right from your phone. Snow day? Two taps.
How Much Time Should You Allow?
Apple’s starting points are a reasonable default, but it helps to know what normal looks like. The 2025 Common Sense Census found US kids aged 5 to 8 average about 3 hours 28 minutes of screen media a day. By the teen years it’s higher: a CDC data brief found half of US teens spend 4 or more hours a day on screens outside schoolwork.
The American Academy of Pediatrics stopped issuing a single number for older kids years ago. Its policy statement suggests about 1 hour a day of quality programming for ages 2 to 5, and consistent limits plus screen-free times and places after that. Our breakdown of average screen time by age has the full numbers, and how much screen time is too much covers where the research draws lines.
My take: budget Social Media tightest, Games second, and leave Education and Creativity alone. A kid making a stop-motion film for three hours is not the problem you’re trying to solve.
Where Parental Controls Fall Short
Controls are a fence, not a fix. Kids find holes in fences. In a CHI 2018 study, Ghosh and colleagues read 736 reviews of 37 parental control apps written by children aged 8 to 19. 76% gave the app one star. The main complaints were that the apps felt overly restrictive, invaded their privacy and damaged their relationship with their parents. Several reviewers described workarounds.
The researchers didn’t conclude that controls are bad. They argued for tools that leave kids some agency and build self-regulation, rather than pure surveillance. That lines up with what works for adults too. Our guide to teen phone addiction for parents goes deeper on the conversation side.
The other blind spot is us. In a Pew survey, 68% of parents said they’re at least sometimes distracted by their phone when spending time with their kids, and 56% said they spend too much time on it. A 7pm Screen Time Schedule on a child’s iPhone lands differently when a parent is scrolling on the couch at 9.
How to Make Limits Stick
A few things make the difference between controls that work and controls that become a nightly negotiation.
- Set them together. Sit down with your kid and build the schedule with them. A rule they helped write is harder to resent.
- Explain the why. “No social media after 9 because sleep” beats “because I said so,” even with teenagers. Especially with teenagers.
- Loosen as they grow. Apple lets you relax Ask to Browse and widen allowances. Plan to, so the controls feel like training wheels instead of a cage.
- Make the phone less sticky. Limits fight the urge. Changing how the phone looks lowers it.
That last one is where grayscale comes in. A 2024 study by Dekker and Baumgartner found that switching phones to grayscale cut daily use by about 20 minutes, because color is a big part of what makes feeds rewarding. Older kids and teens with their own iPhone can try Go Gray, which puts grayscale on a one-tap Control Center toggle and nudges them after 30 minutes on the apps they choose. It’s something they run themselves, which is the point: the CHI researchers argued for exactly that kind of self-regulation.
It works for parents too. If you’re in the 68%, putting your own phone in grayscale during dinner is a quieter way to model the habit than any lecture. More ideas in phone addiction and parenting, or get Go Gray on the App Store.
The Bottom Line
Apple’s iOS 27 parental controls are the best they’ve been. Schedules that follow a school day, category budgets with sensible defaults and contact approval cover what most families need, for free. Set them up from your own phone, lock them with a passcode, and update every device first. Then treat them as the start of the conversation, not the end of it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I set up Apple Screen Time parental controls?
Set up Family Sharing and give your child their own Child Account. Then, on your own iPhone, open Settings, tap Family, tap your child’s name, tap Screen Time and follow the onscreen steps. Apple recommends managing it from the parent’s device rather than the child’s.
What happened to Downtime and App Limits on iPhone?
In iOS 27, Apple replaced them for kids with Screen Time Schedules and Time Allowances. Schedules decide which app categories work at which times of day, and Time Allowances set a daily budget per category such as Games or Social Media. Families with devices that cannot update can keep using the older iOS 26 version.
Can my child turn off Screen Time without me knowing?
Not easily, if you set a Screen Time passcode from your own device. The passcode is needed to change any Screen Time setting, and Apple sends you a notification whenever it is used on your child’s device. Use a code your child has never seen you type.
Do Apple parental controls work across iPhone, iPad and Mac?
Yes, as long as every device in the family is updated and signed in to the child’s own Apple Account. The new iOS 27 controls need every device a parent or managed child used in the last 90 days to run version 27. Older devices can still be managed locally with the Screen Time passcode.
Are parental control apps better than Apple Screen Time?
For most families, no. Apple’s built-in controls now cover schedules, daily budgets, contact approval, purchase approval and web filtering without giving a third party your child’s data. Research on third-party control apps found that 76% of reviews written by children gave them one star, mostly for being invasive.
References
- Apple. (2026). Use Screen Time to manage your child’s iPhone or iPad. support.apple.com
- Apple. (2026). Update your family devices to iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, and visionOS 27. support.apple.com
- Apple. (2026). Set up Screen Time Schedules and Time Allowances on your kid’s device. support.apple.com
- Apple. (2026). How to create a Screen Time passcode on an iPhone or iPad. support.apple.com
- Ghosh, A. K., Badillo-Urquiola, K., Guha, S., LaViola, J. J., & Wisniewski, P. J. (2018). Safety vs. surveillance: What children have to say about mobile apps for parental control. Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. dl.acm.org
- Auxier, B., Anderson, M., Perrin, A., & Turner, E. (2020). Parenting Children in the Age of Screens. Pew Research Center. pewresearch.org
- Zablotsky, B., Arockiaraj, B., Haile, G., & Ng, A. E. (2024). Daily screen time among teenagers: United States, July 2021–December 2023. NCHS Data Brief, no. 513. cdc.gov
- Common Sense Media. (2025). The 2025 Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Zero to Eight. commonsensemedia.org
- AAP Council on Communications and Media. (2016). Media and young minds. Pediatrics, 138(5), e20162591. doi.org
- Dekker, C. A., & Baumgartner, S. E. (2024). Is life brighter when your phone is not? The efficacy of a grayscale smartphone intervention addressing digital well-being. Mobile Media & Communication, 12(3), 688–708. pure.uva.nl (PDF)
Make the phone less sticky
Go Gray for iPhone puts grayscale one tap away, with 30-minute color breaks and a nudge when the scrolling runs long.
