Child Purchase Approval via text message with no approval option

This process is so deeply frustrating, and I don't understand why. When first set up, it worked great. Then a couple days later nothing but "view in store" messages from my daughter's iPad. Tried changing the name of iPads (as I saw suggested in one of these threads) and it worked again, hurray! Only it stopped again a week later.

This is supposed to be a convenience feature, not a "spend 30-40 minutes trying to troubleshoot the **** thing every time my daughter wants a new app" feature. I don't want to rename my devices every couple weeks. I don't want to have to sign out/sign in/restart both devices. I just want a consistent message that I can approve or deny so we can both get on with our day.

Ok. Spoke to a helpful Apple supporter, Sinzit, who were able to solve the issue for me:

Change the name on your own iOS device, your kids’ device and any other guardian’s device and it the text messages will go from saying “View in Store” to the correct “Review the request”.

The way to change the names:

On each device go to Settings > General > About > Name and just make any small change. Do it on all devices and then try to buy/fetch the app again.

It worked for me.

I had this problem for months! Tried everything suggested here to no avail. Funny thing was that my daughter and son have identical iPads; however, every time my son made an App Store purchase on his iPad and hit the “Ask” button, I received a text message that only let me review the app in the App Store but never let me approve the app.

When my daughter made a purchase and hit the ask button, I received the tradition Approve/Decline notification.

What was the difference between the two iPad configurations?

1. Check the Messages app settings. My son had iMessages enabled. My daughter did not. When I disabled his iMessages and purchased an app from his iPad the traditional Approve/Decline message appeared! Yay me!
2. Of course my son uses the Messages app to send me funny pics of himself so I had to figure out what else could be happening. I checked the contacts on his iPad and noticed that under my contact info was my yahoo email address, not the iCloud email address associated with my AppleID. Ok so I changed the contact info and replaced the yahoo email with my iCloud email. Then I re-enabled iMessages in his Messages app and BINGO! When I did the whole purchase routine I got the traditional Approve/Decline notification and not the Messages notification! Awesome!
3. For grins I went to my Messages settings on my iPhone (12pro) and noticed the iMessages Send and Receive entries included my yahoo email address. I disabled that address by unchecking it. I frankly don’t think this had anything to do with the final resolution but it couldn’t hurt!

Well hope this helps someone!

C.Daw

Hi there Apbaccan,

When ask to buy is properly setup, you'll receive a notification, rather than a text message, on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple Watch or Mac.

Use the steps on the following page to turn on Ask to Buy, and access requests from family members: Approve what kids buy with Ask to Buy

Cheers!

What an arrogant and completely useless reply!

You really think people will post a question here, without checking the default instructions first?

Obviously there is an issue not covered in the instructions!

Thank you very much, so glad I finally solved the issue! When I disabled iMessages on my son’s iPhone, ask to buy works as before!

if anyone is still having similar issues, I figure out why I started getting text messages instead of the notifications like I prefer when my kid sends request to download. the issue comes as under your iMessages to send and receive messages. If you have multiple options other than your phone number, you will have this issue. I found that going into iMessages and only selecting my mobile phone number as the option for sending and receiving iMessages resolved the problem whenever my kid made a request to download an app!

Log out apple ID in app store on both devices, then log back in fixed it for me. It may be that my child renaming his iPad broke the process, but it is working again now!

Worked for me ! Thank you

Thank you CrudeDecree, this worked for me.