Before you start

Three prerequisites, all boring, all essential:

  1. Family Sharing is set up, and the child has their own Apple Account in the family group. Screen Time for a child is managed through Family Sharing — without it, you're configuring on-device limits with none of the remote management.
  2. Every family device is updated. The new Screen Time experience requires iOS 27 (or iPadOS/macOS 27) on the devices managing it. If some device can't update, it keeps the previous Screen Time layout.
  3. You do this on your iPhone, not the child's. Apple is explicit: the parent or guardian manages from their own device. Everything below happens on your phone.

Open Settings → Family → [Child's Name] → Screen Time and tap through the prompts. If iOS offers to upgrade parental controls, accept and review what it shows — it walks your existing settings into the new layout.

Step 1: The Screen Time passcode

During setup you set a four-digit Screen Time passcode. Two rules:

  • Set it on your device — with Family Sharing management, the passcode lives with you, which is the whole point.
  • It's different from every passcode the child knows. Not their birthday, not the device code, not the house alarm. The child never watches you type it. This one code guards every limit that follows; a shared digit means every limit shares its secret.

If you ever forget it: with Family Sharing, change it from your device — Settings → Family → [Child's Name] → Screen Time → Change Screen Time Passcode.

Step 2: Screen Time Schedules — when the phone works

Schedules are the backbone of the new Screen Time: windows of the day with different app availability. Start with the templates:

  • Before School — a calm morning window: essentials, maybe music, no games.
  • School — calls, messages, and anything you allow; nothing that glows and hums.
  • After School — the wide-open window, where allowances apply.

Add a night window (or fold it into a schedule) so the phone goes quiet before sleep. Set separate weekday and weekend routines — a Saturday that follows Monday's rules breeds contempt for all rules.

While you're in there, notice the quick actions on the child's Screen Time card in Family: pause the device, allow unlimited time for the day, change the schedule. Those are your fire extinguishers — visible, instant, best used rarely.

Step 3: Time Allowances — how much entertainment

Under Screen Time, Time Allowances holds the daily budget for the categories that actually eat hours: Games, Social Media, Entertainment. iOS 27 shows guidance informed by expert research, tailored to your child's age — take it as a starting point, not a commandment.

Set a total, then tune categories: 60 minutes of games, 30 of social. When an allowance runs out, the apps in that category lock and your child can send you a request for more time — it lands on your phone with context, and you approve or decline, optionally with a message. Approvals like "thirty more minutes, group project" are how the system stays humane.

Step 4: Apps & Websites — what's allowed at all

Still under the child's Family screen:

  • Apps & Websites → Restrictions → Ask to Buy → Require Purchase Approval — every download lands on your phone first.
  • Restrictions → Filtering — pick the web level: Ask to Browse for young kids, Limit Adult Websites for older ones .
  • App Store — Installing Apps allowed or blocked, plus a rating ceiling.

If you started from the iPhone setup guide for parents, some of this is already done — this step is the verification pass.

Step 5: Allowed Contacts and Communication Safety

Allowed Contacts: decide who can reach the child during Screen Time — Contacts Only is right for a first phone. Turn on Manage Contacts if you want to curate who's in the list; leave Allow Contact Editing off and new-contact requests route to you.

Communication Safety: turn it on (it's on by default under 18). It blurs nudity, gore, and violence in shared photos and videos and on FaceTime — for the child's benefit, on their device, without reporting to anyone. It's the setting teenagers will accept precisely because it doesn't spy.

Step 6: Test everything

Hand the child's phone to yourself for ten minutes:

  • Check the School schedule blocks what it should in the right hours — and that calls still work inside it.
  • Let an allowance expire (set one to one minute) and watch the request flow arrive on your phone.
  • Try a download — the Ask to Buy prompt should hit you, not the App Store.
  • Open a site the filter should stop.

Then walk the child through the same tests, on their phone, with you watching. A kid who has seen the system work doesn't spend week one convinced it's broken.

When settings don't sync

Ninety percent of "Screen Time isn't working" is one of: a family device still on old software, the child's account not actually in the family group, or two parents both having edited settings before things settled. Update everything, check the family group, give it a few minutes.

For what every individual setting does — and doesn't do — the reference is parental control settings for iPhone, and the full orientation for a first-time setup is our parental controls guide.