Screen Time

App notifications, while obviously really useful for some apps like Messages, Mail and social media apps, can also be distracting and annoying, especially when you find yourself wasting time just clearing all the red badges. You can, of course, turn off Notifications for specific apps in Settings -> Notifications, but it could take a while to go through each app and turn off its notifications. Thankfully you can get a snapshot of which apps are pushing the most notifications in Screen Time. Here's how:

The Screen Time feature in iOS lets you limit the time you (or your child) spend staring at your screen, whether on specific apps or browsing the internet. The same way you can limit time on specific apps, you can also limit time on specific websites.

Apple Arcade is Apple's video game service that launched in the fall. A five dollar monthly subscription gets you access to tons of games, which can be quite addictive for youngsters and adults alike as we've seen with the recent Fortnite craze. If you don't want your kid playing games all day long or playing with other people online or making inn-app purchases, Screen Time will let you set these restrictions.

Apple's Screen Time feature launched with iOS 12 as a tool to help track and limit time spent on specific apps or app genres, basically offering a way to help parents deal with excessive smartphone use by their children (and themselves). Catalina, the latest version of macOS now offers Screen Time as well, letting you track total time spent on an app whether it is on your Mac, iPhone or iPad. Your iPhone and Mac will both be set to share Screen Time data with your other devices, but you can turn that off if you want.

Being able to track and limit your own iPhone usage is a great feature, but Apple's Screen Time lacks the right tools for parents to properly manage their children's usage. Instead of extending Screen Time to third-party apps so parents can set limits for individual apps, Apple has added "Communication Limits" in iOS 13. Parents can now control who their children can communicate with on their iOS device.