Apple iPhone 11.
Apple’s track record over the last few years as it relates to iOS’ Screen Time parental controls / child management feature is fairly abysmal. Parents rely on these controls to limit their children’s access to various things on their devices. Although the Screen Time feature’s sole focus isn’t on parental controls, Apple describes its child management options thusly, “With Content & Privacy Restrictions in Screen Time, you can block or limit specific apps and features on your child's device. And restrict the settings on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch for explicit content, purchases and downloads, and privacy.”
As described, you’d think Apple’s tool would give parents some peace of mind. Unfortunately for Apple, for about as long as Screen Time has been a feature of iOS, kids have been finding creative ways around its security measures. Over the last couple of years, numerous stories abound of teenagers (and even a 7-year-old) bypassing Screen Time in some way, shape for form, to keep using their desired apps.
The latest such exploit comes by way of an 8-year-old girl with an affinity for YouTube. In a post that appeared on Reddit a few hours ago (which has since been replicated by others), a simple workaround leveraging the iMessage App Store grants access to apps that were previously restricted by Screen Time.
The young girl that discovered the exploit was using an iPhone 6 with iOS v12.4.6, but apparently her older brother replicated it on an iPhone X running iOS v13.4.1 before posting to Reddit, so the bug has been present for quite some time.
The process necessary to defeat Screen Time is fairly straight forward. The user must launch the iMessages app and start a new message. Then access iMessages’ app bar, navigate to the iMessages App Store, tap the magnifying glass, and search for the desired app – in this little girl’s case, YouTube. Then, from within the iMessage App Store, tap the Open button and the app will launch properly.
This seems like the type of bug Apple should be able to patch in a future update, but the company hasn’t been particular responsive to parents that have reported similar issues in the past.
