Family Sharing: Screen Time for two devices

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Level 1

6 points

Family Sharing: Screen Time for two devices

Hi, our son has a child iCloud account that he is logged in on across two devices - an iPad and an Apple Watch 5. The watch 5 is a standalone watch that is set up through my phone. When I go into the watch app to set up screen time, it directs me to open up family sharing screen time to set it on his watch. But when I do that, it only shows my son's ipad and any settings we enter only apply to the iPad. Both devices are definitely logged into the same iCloud account that is set up for family sharing; is there something I need to do to link the watch specifically so I can set up screen time on it?

Thanks in advance!

Apple Watch Series 5

Posted on Oct 14, 2022 03:22 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

jwolf02 Author

Level 1

6 points

Oct 16, 2022 03:55 PM in response to Rigo_O86

Thanks for the response Rigo!

When I go into my Watch app, which I used to set up the watch, and select the watch then go to Screentime, I get this message:

"Screen Time is where you go to manage parental controls for all of your children's devices. Get insights about your family members' screen time and set limits for what you want to manage. Go to Screen Time Settings"

When I click on "Screen Time Settings" it takes me to the family sharing section of screentime where I can adjust the ipad screentime, but not the watch.

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Answer 2

EastDog

Level 2

162 points

Oct 25, 2022 05:27 PM in response to jwolf02

Jwolf, that sounds correct, in my experience. All of the Screen Time settings that "family setup" watches (Downtime/Schooltime/Content and Communication Restrictions/etc) follow should be those set up in the Screen Time pane in Settings.

My understanding is that the Screen Time settings should apply universally to all devices that your children's icloud ID are associated with, so the settings for the iPad should be same. I say "should" because a) I believe this is how it's supposed to work, but 2) for my three kids, across the three devices that they each use (Apple Watches, iPads, and on the family Mac), I have found that these Screen Time changes only occasionally sync correctly, leaving device management an absolute clusterbleep.

I'm now hoping that this has been fixed with the release of iPad OS and Ventura, both of which promised changes that seem to touch Screen Time quite heavily. Just prior to updating everything, I recently turned off Screen Time on all associated devices, and have been hesitant to turn it back... because I will be quite "unhappy" if I find that it's still not working correctly.

Anyways, best of luck. 👍

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