This Is Just a Test.

I’m a fairly satisfied customer of the Apple ecosystem.

iPhones, iPads, Macs - you’ll find all of those in my family; I like the quality of the hardware and the seamless integration with their software.

I’ve reached an age where I want things to “just work”, where I don’t have to tinker for hours to get two systems to cooperate - Apple usually lives up to these expectations.

When we thought about buying our son his own personal phone we factored in the parental controls of the iOS system and the abilities to limit his usage - i.e. we don’t want him to watch videos for hours on end.

With having him as a minor in our iCloud family group this was surprisingly easy to configure, and for months this worked like a charm - screen time limits for all apps, and in the evening the phone would lock for the night.

We don’t know when or why it changed (maybe after an iOS update?), but one day we started noticing that his daily usage was way to high for what we allowed - and indeed, while all other apps would be blocked when the time limit was reached, the YouTube app would happily continue working, as if it was on the list of apps that are always allowed.

I’ve now tried several solutions - disable and reenable screen time limits, add YouTube to a separate rule, competely reset the settings on my son’s phone - all attempts would block the YouTube app as desired, but on the following day the app ignored the limit again.

Some googling revealed that I’m not the only one with this problem and that it’s mysteriously happening to other users for years.

That’s not what I expect from a system that’s supposed to “just work”.