iOS 27 parental controls: the 5 settings that matter

Apple released iOS 27 on September 14. For parents, it’s the first real rebuild of Screen Time since it launched in 2018.

This isn’t a fresh coat of paint. The logic flips: instead of allowing everything and switching things off case by case, you start from a closed device and open up what you want.

Here are the five settings that make the difference, and what they leave out.

A rebuild, not a touch-up

Two things to know before the details.

First, every device in the Family Sharing group has to be on version 27. iPhone, iPad, Mac. Otherwise the family stays on the old behaviour.

Second, the dashboard has been redesigned. Average device use and most-opened apps are there without digging through submenus. You can pause the device through a meal, or open access for a set period, in one tap. And settings reach the child’s device faster, which was one of the most persistent complaints about the old version.

One quieter addition: Share Across Devices now syncs limits and schedules between iPhone, iPad and Mac.

1. The child account

This is the foundation: everything else follows from it.

A child account is required under 13 and available up to 18. It turns on age-appropriate protections across the system: adult sites filtered out, media restricted, App Store limited.

When setting up a device, three starting points: a few essential apps, a recommended set, or a selection picked app by app.

A quieter addition worth knowing: parents can share their child’s age range with third-party apps without giving a date of birth. Apps that support it can then adapt what they show.

2. Time Allowances

This is the change you feel day to day.

Until now, limits were set app by app. The app installed the following month arrived with no cap, and you had to remember to deal with it.

iOS 27 thinks in categories. Entertainment, Games, Social Media. You set a cap for the category and the apps share it. A new app filed under Games inherits the games cap straight away.

Three details that count:

• You can create your own categories and move an app from one to another.
• Websites tied to an app follow the same allowance. Opening a social network in Safari no longer sidesteps its limit.
• Apple suggests a starting duration based on age, drawn from the American Academy of Pediatrics. The slider tells you whether the setting sits within general guidance.

That suggestion is a starting point, not a standard. To work out which number to set, measuring a week gives a firmer base than a general average. An hour of gaming with friends and an hour of scrolling alone aren’t the same thing, and no counter can tell them apart.

3. Daily schedules

The cap says how long. The schedule says when.

You can decide which categories are available at which times of day, with different rules on different days. Social media closed during school hours, games unavailable after 9pm, a looser weekend.

It’s the feature that comes closest to the rules families already say out loud. The difference is that it doesn’t need repeating every evening.

4. Ask to Browse

Built on the same model as Ask to Buy, Apple now covers browsing.

When a child wants to open a site they’ve never visited in Safari, they send a request. The parent gets it in Messages, looks at the site, approves or declines. Once a site is approved, the child goes back to it freely.

It’s an allow list that builds up over time, rather than a filter trying to guess in advance what counts as acceptable. That holds up better for a younger child.

Worth expecting, though: a twelve-year-old doing homework research can send a lot of requests in the first few weeks.

5. Who can reach the child

Two separate settings on the same subject.

Contact approval first. A new number or account has to be approved before the child can exchange with it in Phone, FaceTime or Messages.

Communication Safety second. It already blurred nudity. It now also blocks violent content in shared photos and videos, including during a FaceTime call, and it works across more third-party apps.

What these settings don’t fix

All of this is good news. It doesn’t cover everything, and that’s worth saying plainly.

A limit answers “how long”, not “why am I opening this”. Thirty minutes of social media go just as fast when you didn’t choose them. The limit arrives at the end, once the time is already spent.

The settings stop at 18. What’s left after that is whatever the child learned to notice on their own. A rule applied from the outside for ten years doesn’t turn itself into a habit of their own on their birthday. It’s the same limit found with school phone bans: the rule protects a place and a time slot, then it stops at the gate. And when they give way before 18, that’s another subject: what to do when your teen bypasses parental controls.

And for yourself, it doesn’t hold the same way. Two of these settings exist on your own iPhone: Time Allowances and schedules can be set for yourself, in Settings → Screen Time. The approval requests do need a child account.

How to use them for yourself, with custom categories and three setups, is the subject of the guide to Time Allowances.

But what makes the system hold on the child’s side is that the Screen Time passcode sits with the parent: the limit is set by someone else. On your own iPhone, nobody holds that passcode for you. You know it. Setting the limit takes a minute, removing it takes two seconds, and nothing stands in the way. That’s the problem pourquoi.app takes from another angle, by asking why you’re opening an app rather than locking the screen.

The child’s phone now has real boundaries around it. The parents’ phone still has no schedule, and it’s the one kids see most.

FAQ

Do all the family’s devices need updating?

Yes. The new Screen Time needs every device in the Family Sharing group to be on version 27, iPhone, iPad and Mac included. A device left behind keeps the old behaviour.

At what age is a child account required?

It’s required under 13. Above that it stays available up to 18, at the parents’ discretion.

Do Time Allowances replace per-app limits?

They add a cap per category, such as Games or Social Media. The practical difference: an app installed later inherits its category’s cap instead of arriving with no limit at all.

Do these features help an adult limit their own use?

Partly. Time Allowances and schedules can be set for yourself too, in Settings → Screen Time. The approval requests do need a child account. The caveat stays the same: you know your own Screen Time passcode, so the limit lifts in two seconds.