How do you limit screen time on iphone

(Pocket-lint) - Apple's Screen Time aims to address growing concerns around increasing device usage, smartphone addiction and social media impacting on mental health. The idea is to help you regain control, or at least make you aware of the amount of time you are spending on your devices and what you are doing on them. 

Here's everything you need to know about Apple Screen Time, how to use it and what features it offers.

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What is Apple Screen Time?

Screen Time is a core part of iOS and iPadOS and as such, it works with all apps without developers or individual apps needing to make any changes to benefit from it.

It's located within the Settings app and it monitors the way you use your devices, presenting everything from how long you've spent on certain app categories and specific apps, to how many times you've picked up your iPhone in a given day or even hour.

Data collected can be viewed in handy charts within the Screen Time menu and at the beginning of the week on a Monday morning, you'll get a report via a notification so you can see exactly what you've been doing that week, how it compared to the previous week and how much time you wasted in certain apps.

Apple breaks down the apps using the categories from the App Store so you can see whether you play a lot of games, or spend time on social media, or if you're a utilities person.

As the data is picked up from the App Store - and that's all reviewed by a human - you shouldn't find that a game is hiding in a work category, for example, offering a good indication of how you are using your devices.

Screen Time is based on your iCloud account, which means you will be able to see how you use apps across multiple devices by toggling on the 'Share Across Devices' option in the Screen Time menu.

How to use Screen Time

To see your Screen Time and access all the data collected by the feature, head to the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad and tap on the Screen Time menu. 

From here, you can set App Limits, schedule Downtime, set which apps you want to allow at all times, block inappropriate content and set limits based on your contacts. You can also choose to use a Screen Time passcode to allow for more time when limits expire - good to use on a family iPad for example.

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From here, you'll see a chart with a number of the pickups for that day or week (depending on the selected tab at the top), along with the time of the First Pickup when in Day view, or day with the most pickups when in Week view.

To change between Day and Week view, select Day or Week at the top of the Screen Time menu.

Screen Time parental controls

While parental controls go a long way to delivering more granular controls, Apple doesn't offer multiple user support on a single device for iPhone or iPad. Screen Time only works via iCloud account usage on devices so if you have a family iPad, the system will record all app usage regardless of who uses it.

You can control the apps your children are using though. Parents can access their child's Activity Report from their own Apple devices to understand where their child spends their time and they can manage and set App Limits.

You can also use Downtime to schedule a block of time to limit when your child can use their Apple device, such as bedtime.

Screen Time settings are all managed remotely via the parent's device, so your kids won't be able to bypass the features, or turn them off.

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Writing by Stuart Miles and Britta O'Boyle.

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