Submitted by Marshall Walker on
Apple really dropped the ball with its Screen Time feature. Instead of allowing users to limit time spent using an individual app or game, Screen Time only allows users to set daily time limits for app categories. This means parents can't limit how long their children play Fortnite or use Snapchat.
While Screen Time is very useful for monitoring how much you use your iPhone or iPad, it is pretty useless where it should have counted mos. Screen Time should have given iOS users the ability to limit time spent on individual apps/games, and the ability to set specific times when apps could be accessed, like after school hours. What's the point of knowing your screen time breakdown if you can't do much with that knowledge?
Hopefully Apple plans to add these abilities in a future update, but until then here's how you can limit app usage:
- Open the Settings app on the device you want to limit.
- Tap "Screen Time"
- Tap "App Limits"
- Tap "Add Limit"
- Select the Category you want to limit. You can select more than one.
- Select the amount of time you want to limit that category.
You can choose to limit all apps and categories or individual categories. For example, if you wanted to limit time spent on Fortnite you would select the Games category. To find an app's category you can check its Information section in the Apple App Store. You can only limit the amount of time a game or app can be used in a day. Users will be sent a notification five minutes before the limit expires.