Screen Time disables itself. Recurring problem

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Screen Time disables itself. Recurring problem

Hi everyone. I understand that this is an issue with iOS and a search online has shown this issue occurs across generations of iOS and iPadOS, but I’ve only just started getting this bug since I updated all our devices to iOS/iPadOS 16.2. In the evenings of the last few weeks, the iPads of my children ask for extra time when Screen Time kicks in and I give them an extra 15 minutes before I tuck them in for the night. At that point, all the devices forget the Screen Time settings and my children get the opportunity to watch YouTube through the night. Not a massive issue because I go up to tuck them in anyway, but why is this happening? I’ve checked my iPad as that is where I’ve got the parental controls set up from and it’s showing that Screen Time isn’t enabled whenever this happens. Each time I re set it up with beginning and end times and days of the week and passcodes, but either minutes or days later it will all turn off and be forgotten again.

Following advice given to other people on here, I’ve disabled parental controls and turned off all the devices and restarted them, then re set parental controls up again on my iPad ready for the next day. This seems to make the problem go away for a seemingly random number of days, but then it occurred again last night. Bizarrely, when I set up Screen Time again this morning after it disabled itself at some point in the night, it locked all the children’s devices this morning while they were using them. It’s almost as if the devices aren’t seeing the time servers and are glitching maybe?

Ive rebooted the internet router, even though we’ve had no issues with the connection with our other devices in the home, but that hasn’t changed the issue with the Apple devices.

I really don’t want to have to wipe all the iPads and phones and go through the hassle of setting them all up from scratch if it’s not going to fix this either.

Can I roll back to a previous version of iOS/iPadOS? Has anyone had any luck with doing that to get rid of this issue?

p.s. I do change the passcode regularly too, so no; the children aren’t disabling the parental controls themselves. Plus the settings are getting wiped from my iPad at the same time too

iPad Pro 11-inch Wi-Fi

Posted on Dec 26, 2022 02:45 AM

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Answer 1

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zincplated Author

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Dec 26, 2022 04:59 AM in response to zincplated

I think I’ve fixed it myself.

Other symptoms that I found were that no matter what down times I entered on my iPad for the children’s accounts, it would only seem to use the morning’s time as an unlock time, so for example it will show Locked until 7 tomorrow morning on their lock screen, no matter what night time I changed the lock time to. Switching the times around, it would then show Locked until 9 tonight. Shutting down and restarting the devices didn’t change that.

It looks like the ios16/16.2 update added more variables to the Screen Time settings app. Disabling / turning off Screen Time completely on the parent’s device is needed, not just for the children’s accounts, but also for your own account/device.

In my case, my own iPad had somehow got Screen Time enabled, along with separate settings for the children’s accounts. I could no longer disable screen time on my own device because the passcode had got scrambled from the last software update. Resetting my own Screen Time passcode using my email login, then disabling Screen Time completely has fixed it across all devices for now. I’ve restarted all the devices and set up Screen Time just for their accounts (without setting anything for my own account) and I’ll see how things go.

I’ll come back and update here if it breaks again.

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Answer 2

Jan 9, 2023 11:29 AM in response to zincplated

Did this work? I’ve tried everything! All of the usual fixes and more. I’m on my 5th Senior Apple Advisor. They all say it is not a known issue. The only thing I’ve refused is erasing devices and setting up as new. Clearly it is an Apple issue with all of the problems I’m seeing out here. Would love to know if this is the fix!

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Answer 3

zincplated Author

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Jan 9, 2023 12:26 PM in response to Tgarrett07

No.

I narrowed down the culprit though.

”One More Minute”

When their device runs out of time and you’re not quick enough to get there to enter your passcode to give them an extra few minutes, or to tuck them in for the night and they press the button to give themselves an extra minute, that’s when your own device settings get disabled.

Usually on Safari and if they open a new tab on Safari when the time runs out and they press the One more minute option, their device unlocks completely until you notice something is wrong and get a chance to re-enable Downtime from your device. It also disables all the other parental controls settings within Screen Time.

When it happens, go back into the Screen Time settings on your device and re-enable Scheduled Downtime. Wait a few moments and it will download your previous settings and times and lock all the devices down again

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Screen Time disables itself. Recurring problem

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