I’ve spent about 8 weeks plugging away on one critical chapter in my iPhones for All book project on supporting independence for special needs adults. It’s a chapter on enabling safe use and it’s forced me to do a deep dive into what works and what doesn’t work with iOS 12 Screen Time.
Today I gave up. The proverbial last straw was when I used remote Screen Time to disabled “Store Purchases & Redownloads” and … nothing happened. It believe this worked before, but this time it had no effect.
I might have triggered the bug by toggling it on and off and exploring “Ask to Buy” behaviors or by switching “Content Restrictions”. I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. It’s not the only bug I’ve run into, it’s just the latest one.
iOS 12 (remote) Screen Time is a mess. I’d read that it was a rush job. I’m sure it was. I think Apple bolted it on to their problematic Family Sharing infrastructure and discovered too late that the challenge was ten times bigger than they thought it was.
I don’t know if Apple will fix Screen Time in iOS 13. I’ve seen rumors that they might redo it, but I fear the problems are too deep to be fixed in a single release iterations. I also worry that the political pressure is off of Apple.
I’m going to focus on other parts of the book project and wait and see if iOS 13 is any better.