According to System Preferences, the Downtime feature of Screen Time "[s]ets a schedule for time away from the screen. During downtime, only apps that you choose to allow and phone calls will be available." Downtime blocks most apps, but it does not block Finder. It blocks the Quick Look feature of Finder for video but not audio or PDF. How can I block Quick Look for all file types during downtime? Alternatively, can I force a log out during downtime? As I recall, the Restrictions feature that preceded Screen Time could force a log out. If Screen Time cannot do this, then what parental control apps can?

Some time earlier this year I started getting my child's screen time requests in the Messages app. This has become really annoying. The whole thing seems half-baked and there are several issues: 1. Each request appears multiple times 2. The request, which goes to both my wife and me, shows up as coming from my child, but the request text says "Mama asked for more time". 3. I send my messages to my laptop as well, and there these messages all show a spinning fan while Messages loads more information, I guess. 4. It really locks up the Messages app. Sometimes it causes the app to crash. "Messages quit unexpectedly." I tried searching for ways to disable this but I didn't find any good answers on the Apple support site. I can't see actual messages from my kid for all these stupid screen time requests. Is there a way to disable this again?

The standard setting for Downtime on my system is from 22:00 to 7:00, that is, from ten in the evening to seven in the morning, or over night. Instead of blocking apps over night, I want to block them *during the day*, specifically from 8:00 to 12:00 in the morning. But when I enter those times in Downtime, the apps are blocked all the time. Here is a screenshot that shows that when I set a block for 8:00 to 12:00 on Fridays, apps are blocked at 23:37 on a Friday: So how do I set a downtime during the day, not over night?

So I added my son to our iCloud family and setup screen time for him. I customized the Downtime so that he can have iPad access during school time. It looks like this: - Monday: 15:00 - Tuesday 9:00 - Tuesday: 15:00 - Wednesday 9:00 ... - Friday: 15:00 - Saturday 14:59 - Saturday: 14:59 - Sunday 14:00 - Sunday: 14:00 - Monday 9:00 And if he needs his iPad, he can ask me for the pass code during downtime to play games etc. All is well, until today. But today when I looked at his screen time stats, it's obvious that he's been playing games outside of the allowed times! After some questioning, he admits that he changed the Downtime setting on my laptop. Apparently you can turn off certain customized days without pass code. And after some testing it turns out passcode is only needed when: - I want to turn off/on downtime completely - I want to change "Block at Downtime" option But I can turn off a customized day without passcode! But, in my son's case, he just need to turn off Sunday and Saturday! I'm confused. What's the point of having the passcode then.

I get this error when opening Screen Time on my Mac: The URL "prefs:root=SCREEN_TIME" is missing a hostname. I just upgraded to Mac Os X Ventura 13.0.1; Screen Time has never worked since the upgrade. Any suggestions on how to get Screen Time working again?

I know there is some feature that blocks unwanted webs. It works for only about 30 addresses. Is it possible to block by wildcards, e.g. www.website.* instead of www.website.com?

I have an iPhone that I'm signed into with iCloud that has certain App Limits set. I also have Screentime and app limits set on my MBP. There is text indicating that these should be syncing in the macOS preference pane: > App limits apply to all devices that are using iCloud for screen time But I'm not seeing those limits sync between my two devices. Is there a way to force that sync? macOS: iOS:

I’m having recurring issues with Screen Time on my daughter’s iPhone (running iOS 18), and I would appreciate any help in closing the loopholes she’s found. She has discovered two reliable ways to bypass the daily Screen Time limits I’ve set up: 1. Changing the region of the device — When she switches to another region in Settings > General > Language & Region, the Screen Time usage stats and limits appear to reset or be disabled temporarily. This effectively gives her a fresh start on screen time. 2. Restarting the iPhone — After restarting the device, Screen Time limits stop working for the rest of the day. It’s as if the usage clock or restrictions aren’t reapplying until the next day, or perhaps not at all. I’ve already taken the following steps: - Set up Screen Time using Family Sharing, with a passcode only I know. - Enabled “Block at End of Limit” for all apps I want restricted. - Turned on “Set Automatically” under Date & Time and tried to restrict changes via Content & Privacy Restrictions — though I can’t find a way to lock region or fully restrict this setting in iOS 18. - The phone is up to date and not jailbroken. Questions: * Is there a way to lock or restrict region changes on an iPhone? * Has anyone found a workaround to prevent Screen Time from breaking after a reboot? * Is there a more robust way (via MDM, profiles, etc.) to prevent these loopholes from being exploited?

I’m trying to block out web content from my devices. Basically all social media sites and other useless yet addictive crap. I’ve added the sites I want to block to the “Never Allow” list in Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > App Store, Media, Web & Games > Web Content. Last night, this was working as expected, but today this seems to have disabled itself. The sites are in the list, and the “Content & Privacy Restrictions” is enabled. But Safari doesn’t block any of the sites. Weird! Is this a bug? edit: I’ve edited the “Never Allow” list. This made Safari crash a few times, but now the blocks seem to work again. So this looks like a very buggy bit of iOS.

I want to 'force install' some extensions on my son's Mac (to limit access to sites), and was looking at [Chrome Deployment documentation.](https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/9020078?hl=en&ref_topic=7650028) I'm at a loss on the last step ... is there a way to install Chrome on his Mac with policies in effect, without paying for an expensive professional MDM? Unfortunately Apple's Screen Time does not work in Chrome (yet).

I have forgotten my passcode for the Screen Time on my iPad, how can I still change the password without wiping the iPad's data? I have searched online but all articles say that there is Forgot Passcode? if you have iOS or iPadOS 13.3 or later, but I don't see that option with the newest version. How can I still change my passcode?

I am a data analyst and would like to look at the underlying data that is the basis for the relatively simple screen time reports. I want to be able to look at my phone usage data in more detail and beyond the 7 day report period that is usually reported. Has anyone figured out how to access the data or create more in depth analyses?

I'm trying to prevent myself from overusing my iPhone and it seems like this is exactly what the screen time app was designed for but to my surprise it is utterly useless. It requires only a 4 digit password to unlock. What I was hoping to do was to write down a long 16 digit password that I can't remember on a piece of paper then store the paper in an inconvenient location that is very hard to reach. But I can't do that since it only allows for a 4 digit number. But I can't forget a 4 digit number so I have no way of making a sufficiently strong password. I'm aware that you can change the password to your device but that is easily worked around since one need only ask to change the password through email. This is an incredible oversight and I can't believe Apple would be so shortsighted as to botch this but I really see no way to create a sufficiently strong password using screen time. I also have no friends and am completely alone in the world so I can't ask someone else to make the password but even if I did have such a person that is not a solution since I need to be able to access the password in certain emergencies. I just want to make unlimited access to the iPhone hard to obtain not impossible.

Through the desktop widget for Screen Time on my M3 Max MacBook Pro with macOS 15.1.1, I noticed how usage for today was around 35 hours (!), 12.5 of which were occupied by the com.apple.controlcenter process. Browsing Activity Monitor didn't return any relevant result for that specific process, even though looking directly for "Control Center" returned the expected result. Here is a screenshot of System Settings > Screen Time > App & Website Activity, filtered down for only my Mac in devices. As you can see, it shows Control Centre as being an in-use app for close to 14h, something that I have honestly never seen before. Safari is running, but I have certainly not kept it in focus for 12h! YouTube was running on the iPad as a background music for my workday for 6h (checking the iPad page of Screen Time), but it was never once opened on Mac. The Tips app was running, but in focus for perhaps 10 minutes while I was writing a blog post? Then what is 5h of Dailymotion? I have no app that is called like that, no process running that answers to it, nor any Safari tab that has it. Any idea what may be going on and what I could do to solve it? Just a bug in Screen Time, perhaps?

I want to prevent my child from accessing their computer after (say) 9pm on school nights, but allow them to not have that restriction on a Friday or Saturday evening. While the Screen Time setting for Downtime does that, it is confusing as to how the schedule works when you consider wrapping from one evening into the next morning. For example, see this schedule: From this, I would presume that Sunday evening the downtime kicks in at 9:30pm. On Friday, the downtime would end at 6am and be disabled until Sunday comes around again. I noticed my child was on past 9:30pm last night (a Sunday; and yes, 'Block and Downtime' is ticked), so I'm wondering if that Sunday entry of "9:30pm to 6am" didn't apply to 9:30pm on Sunday until 6am on Monday or if it meant 9:30pm on Saturday until 6am on Sunday. The problem is that none of the guides I've found online seem to get into this detail and even Apple's documentation shows a custom where Sunday and Saturday are turned off, but doesn't explain how the hour mapping works. Is this the correct setting to block at 9:30pm on Sunday until Friday 6am, or is there another way to interpret how the schedule works? Or, is there some hack out there that the kids know about which defeats this mechanism (other than knowing the code to unlock)?

I am trying to limit my usage of certain websites, but I have found this challenging on macOS. The screen time tracked is often much longer than my actual usage, and some of the apps or websites being counted are not even installed. (I have already **turned off** device sharing to avoid complications.) For example, I do not have YouTube app installed, yet it is counted for 4 hours 18 minutes: Also zhihu.com, which I only used for a few minutes, is counted to have been used for as long as Safari is used: I went through all the tabs on Safari, including all the tab groups, but I still can not find where zhihu.com might be secretly open. I also tried rebooting my laptop, but it did not resolve the issue. - macOS version: 10.15.7 - Safari version: 15.6.1 Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated! ---------- BTW, I saw this answer for iOS, which did not solve the problem either.

Looking at the docs, the only restriction I found is related to Screen Time settings modification . Is there any way to see user's screen time thru MDM ?

In my Screen Time on my Apple account, I'm seeing 24 hours a day over the last few weeks of accessing "https://ybb-network.com/ ". Screen Time confirms this is coming from my Mac Laptop. I assume this is some kind of malware. Any suggestions on how to find the source of the malware and remove it? Obviously I'd love to find the true source of the problem. UPDATE: I downloaded the free trial of Malwarebytes, based on the recommendations here and after reading in several places that it's a trustworthy app. It found a few "threats" in its scan: I pressed the "quarantine" button on these, and I checked my browser extensions in Safari and Chrome, but I'm not seeing anything suspicious. Any other advice on how to remove them?

In Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Store, Web, Siri & Game Center Content > Web Content, you can block sites either by blocking adult websites or allowing only approved websites. This works fine when it comes to blocking webpages, but it does NOTHING for downloads. For example, if you set it on "Only Approved Websites", which by default allows a few kids websites and blocks everything else, and then type a *download link* into the URL box of Safari (or any other browser or app that uses WebKit) -- the download goes through and you are able to download an entire file despite the fact that the domain that the file comes from is blocked. This is because the link is is a download link, not a webpage link. This bypass works for any website at all, and includes adult movies, images, applications -- whatever you want to download, you can download as long as you have the download link. How do I block downloads on WebKit in iOS?

My iPhone SE 2020 doesn't appear in Screen Time on my M1 MacBook Air or iPad Air 3rd gen. All devices are signed into the same iCloud account and fully updated to the latest supported stable (i.e. non-beta) OS releases. All have 'Share Across Devices' enabled in Screen Time. The Mac and iPad appear in Screen Time on all three devices but the iPhone's data only shows up on the iPhone itself. Tried: - Toggling 'Share Across Devices', on iPhone - Toggling 'Share Across Devices', on all three devices at the same time - Toggling Screen Time on iPhone - Toggling Screen Time on all 3 devices (with all off at the same time) - Logging out of iCloud and logging back in on iPhone Edit: At the time of writing the installed OS were iOS/iPadOS 14.4.2 and macOS Big Sur 11.2.3. The issue is still present in August 2024, in iOS/iPadOS 17.5.1 and macOS Sonoma 14.5.