Monitor a child's iPhone
How to Monitor a Kids iPhone
It's possible for parents to monitor activity on their child's iPhone in a number of different ways.
Are you worried about how your child is using their iPhone or iPad? If you are concerned about whether or not your child is accessing inappropriate content, or if they are engaging in risky behavior, this guide will give you peace of mind that you have full visibility into your child's activity on their iPhone or iPad. In this guide, we'll show you how to monitor your child's iPhone or iPad to ensure full transparency.
Prepare an iPhone or iPad for monitoring
A core requirement for monitoring on your child's iPhone or iPad is to set up Apple Family. We go into this in more detail in our parents guide to setting up a child's iPhone , but here is the high-level summary:
- The iPhone should be signed in with your child's Apple ID, not your own Apple account.
- Ensure that your child's Apple account should have their age set correctly.
Setting up comprehensive screen monitoring
The most comprehensive way to monitor a child's iPhone or iPad is to use an app like LivingRoom for Families , which uses screen recording to capture all activity on the device.
This approach cuts through all the complexity that you'll get with traditional monitoring approaches. It's simple to get started and impossible for a child to bypass.
While your child uses the iPhone or iPad, they'll see a recording indicator in the top corner of the screen, reminding them to browse responsibly.
In the parent's dashboard , you'll be able to review screenshots of exactly what your child saw while using the device.
You can also use this screen monitoring approach to make Snapchat safe for kids .
Strangers attempting to message your child on Snapchat will see that the chat is being recorded:
You'll also be able to see the contents of disappearing messages, so no activity on the device is hidden from you.
Monitor Activity with Screen Time Only
There might be some cases where you can't use Apple Family, but if your child's iPhone has Screen Time, this can be set up to record their activity, similar to Apple Family. Parents will need to "borrow" their child's iPhone to view and make changes.
To monitor activity from your child's iPhone with Screen Time, here's what will need to be set up:
Each time you'd like to view your child's iPhone activity, you will need to have access to the physical device. It's strongly recommended that parents know both the iPhone passcode and their child's Screen Time passcode.
Optionally, parents can prevent their child from changing Passcode or Face ID settings:
Read our dedicated guide for parental controls on iPhones for full setup instructions.
What Kind of Activity Does Apple Family Collect?
Since Apple as a company has taken a strict stance on its user's privacy, Family Sharing does not record everything your child does. Instead, it gives you, the parent, a summary of some of the more important kinds of activity:
- Your child's app usage and screen time
- New app downloads and in-app purchases
- Websites visited in the Safari browser
- App notifications
Parents will see a summary like this for their child's activity for each day:
Website activity will also be listed in the same view. Here's another day that includes more website activity:
Unfortunately for parents, Apple does not allow you to view detailed information about your child's activity, like
- Specific pages browsed on a website; for example, parents can see the time their child has spent on Google, but won't see their child's search activity
- Specific content viewed by their child, like YouTube videos, posts viewed, or other social media activity
However, instead of providing detailed information, Apple does allow parents to set a wide range of restrictions for websites or apps.
Opening each app will provide a summary like this:
Parents can also view some basic information about websites visited by their children:
Frequently Asked Questions
Can my child leave our Family Group?
This depends on the birthdate set on your child's account. If your child's Apple account thinks your child is below 13 years old, then your child cannot leave the Family Group until they age naturally.
This also means that they can't change their birthdate, which can be changed on teen or normal Apple accounts.
What activity can parents view about their child's app usage?
Parents can only see the total amount of time their child has spent on an app.
What's the difference between website and app activity?
Screen Time combines all Safari web browsing and app activity into one view.
Some platforms, such as YouTube, offer both a website and an app. In this case, the screen time activity you see as a parent is a combined total for both the website viewed in Safari and the app version of the platform.
Can parents see text messages or phone call activity?
No, although they can see or add Contacts for their child.