How to use parental controls on iOS 27

The iOS 27 September update was introduced by Siri AI, but there are also many small feature improvements in the new operating system. You may have missed a parental control overhaul. For these changes, Apple worked alongside the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to bring new safety tools. They also created a companion guide Building Healthy Digital Habits to help parents create healthy digital habits for their children, balancing screen use with essentials like sleep, exercise, homework and family time.

Among the new parental control features introduced are time allocations, request to browse, request to add contacts, a device pause function and expanded communications security. The setup process has also been simplified, offering age-appropriate app recommendations for new child accounts, rather than transferring each default app to a child’s home screen.

However, these features do not automatically activate when updating a device. Each device in a Family Sharing group (whether it’s an iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, or Apple TV) must be running iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, or tvOS 27 before the new Screen Time system will work. Devices that can’t be updated will continue to use older iOS 26 controls, creating a gap for families with older hardware. If you haven’t updated your devices yet, go through the steps to prepare for a major software update and install them all.

The most notable change is the replacement of app limits with time allowances, giving you finer control over how your kids spend their screen time. For example, if you allow your children to spend three hours a day on their phones, you can decide how much time they can spend on social media, entertainment, and games. There are also custom categories that parents can create themselves, setting an allocation per category instead of managing dozens of individual app limits.

Ask to Browse allows parents to monitor Safari activity by requiring approval before a child visits an unapproved website. Approval requests come into Messages, so parents can review and approve links without having to dig into a separate app. The Communications Safety feature, which flags nudity in messages, AirDrop and FaceTime, now also detects and blurs graphic violence and gore. Ask to add contacts is also a new feature, allowing kids to get parental approval before they can call or text a new phone number.

Finally, Pause Devices allows parents to instantly lock a child’s device with a single tap, which is ideal when your child won’t stop playing with their phone at dinner or during homework time. Overall, these tweaks make setting up your child’s iPad (or any other Apple device) easier.

To get started, you need to create a child account for each child, if you haven’t created them already. First, make sure you have set up a Family Sharing group, then go to Settings > Family on your iPhone. If any devices are not yet updated, here you will see information about devices requiring the latest version. To manage an existing child, tap their name to access their settings. Review the iOS 27 additions to confirm they are configured as you want.

If you need to add a new child, you can take advantage of the new configuration process: tap the icon Add at the top right, then follow the steps. Default settings vary by age. For example, Ask to Browse, Limit Adult Websites, and Contact Management features are enabled by default for children under 13. Communications security is also enabled for everyone under the age of 18. Most other restrictions are a parental decision once a child turns 13, as Ask to Browse and Contact Management no longer turn on automatically.

From there, parents can create separate weekday and weekend schedules, overlay category-specific caps into an overall daily limit, and enable Ask to Buy for in-app purchases. The redesigned Screen Time dashboard gives you a quick overview of usage, so you spend less time digging through menus. Apple recommends periodically reviewing settings using AAP age-specific guidance as children grow.