Apple: Screen Time tips for Parents – Screen Recording and iOS 12

If your child uses a device with iOS 12.x installed, you should know that a Screen Recording will capture you entering the device’s Screen Time password – if you enter it on an iOS 12 device.

Screen recording in iOS 12

Screen Time “helpfully” captures the Passcode.

Screen recording on iOS 13

No passcode capture.

Tips:

  1. Never enter your Screen Time password on their device if you can help it.
  2. Turn off Screen Recording in their Screen Time settings.
  3. Check to see if Screen Recording is ON before you enter your password – look for the red dot in the upper left corner of the screen.

Tech: Screentime tips for Parents - Managing Music

Screentime is Apple’s parental control tool – in the usual Apple way a whole variety of tools are jammed together somewhat haphazardly, and when it works it’s great and when it doesn’t work it’s impossible to fix.

If you and your child are on different versions of iOS (e.g. if they are on iOS 12.x and you are on iOS13.x), then Screentime may not work as promised/predicted.

The ‘Content and Privacy Restrictions’ sections give you a set of tools for managing content and privacy (as you’d expect), along with a set of general device/account management tools.

If you use iOS 13 and your child uses iOS 12, you might think this setting on your device would control whether they could hear “explicit” or “clean” music – but it often doesn’t work. The settings aren’t always synced between devices.

To make sure your content settings are updated across devices, you now need to go to their device, enter Screen Time settings, enter your passcode, and change their Content Restrictions settings.