From your own iPhone: Settings, then Family. The step almost everyone misses is the one before that. Every device in your Family Sharing group has to be running iOS 27 or the new controls will not appear.
Apple released iOS 27 on 14 September 2026. Older devices that cannot take it keep last year’s controls, which means a household running one updated phone and one older iPad has two different sets of rules and no warning that they differ.
Setting it up. On your phone, open Settings, then Family, then tap Get Started. You can carry over controls you already had or begin again. The walkthrough covers which websites your child can open, age ratings, who they are allowed to contact, daily hours, school hours, Time Allowances, and a four-digit Screen Time passcode.
Pick a passcode your child has never watched you type, and not the one that unlocks the phone. Those are two different passcodes and Apple says so explicitly. If you have used the same four digits for both, your child has had the key since the day you set it up.
What Time Allowances do. They set a daily limit by category rather than by app: Entertainment, Games, or Social Media. Those are the three. Apple suggests a limit for your child’s age and you can change it. The company that made each app decides which category it falls into, taking Entertainment and Games from the category it chose on the App Store, and Social Media from whether it declares social features. From September 2026 Apple will not accept a new version of an app without that declaration.
What Ask to Browse does. It makes your child ask before opening a website they have not visited before. Apple names Safari and no other browser, which means a child using a different browser is outside it.
What Communication Safety now covers. It blocks gore and violence as well as nudity in images and videos your child is sent, including during live FaceTime calls. It works in Apple’s own apps. In another company’s app it only works if that company has built it in.
Child accounts are compulsory for under-13s when a phone is set up, and available up to 18.
What this means for you right now
Check the iOS version on every device in the group before you touch anything else. Not just your child’s phone. An old iPad in the kitchen running last year’s software is a hole in whatever you set up today, and it won’t let you know.
Then check the two passcodes are different. This takes a minute and closes the most common route past everything else on this page.
Then accept what this cannot do. All of it depends on the phone knowing it belongs to a child. A hand-me-down handset that was never reset, or a phone your child set up themselves with their own Apple Account, has none of this switched on and will not appear in your Family group at all. If you cannot see the device in Settings, then Family, you are not managing it, whatever you have configured.
Checked 16 September 2026.
Sources:
- Apple Support, how to set a Screen Time passcode
- Apple Support, create, change or remove a Screen Time passcode on iPhone
- Apple Newsroom, iOS 27, 14 September 2026
