{"id":172889,"date":"2025-05-19T14:26:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T18:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/midatlanticconsulting.com\/blog\/?p=172889"},"modified":"2025-05-19T14:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T18:26:10","slug":"how-your-kids-are-bypassing-screen-time-restrictions-and-downloading-apps-on-their-iphone-without-ask-to-buy-authorization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/midatlanticconsulting.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/how-your-kids-are-bypassing-screen-time-restrictions-and-downloading-apps-on-their-iphone-without-ask-to-buy-authorization\/","title":{"rendered":"How your kids are bypassing Screen Time restrictions and downloading apps on their iPhone without Ask to Buy authorization"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Apple\u2019s Family Sharing parental controls and Screen Time restrictions can be bypassed to redownload apps without Ask to Buy authorization with a workaround.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Like most parents, iDownloadBlog owner Sebastien has set up Family Sharing on family members\u2019 devices. This convenient built-in feature allows everyone to share resources like iCloud storage, subscriptions, apps, media and more.<\/p>\n

He also set up the Screen Time parental restriction on the kids\u2019 devices and turned on the Ask to Buy setting<\/a> to block the installation of apps like TikTok without mom\u2019s or dad\u2019s approval. Imagine Seb\u2019s surprise when he found out that his daughter and her friends had found a way to bypass the Screen Time limitations that enabled her to download apps without approval\u2014and it\u2019s the stupidest workaround imaginable.<\/p>\n

Family Sharing: Don\u2019t trust Ask to Buy to stop App Store redownloads without authorization<\/h2>\n

All she did was go into the family purchase history in the App Store and was able to redownload any app that her mom or I had ever downloaded, TikTok included. She didn\u2019t have to enter a password to approve the download, nor did the parents see an Ask to Buy notification to approve it. She literally went in there, searched for TikTok in the family purchase history, hit the cloud icon and boom\u2014done!<\/p>\n

\"Turn <\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t intended behavior; Apple\u2019s support page<\/a> spells out that attempting to redownload a previously downloaded app should result in an Ask to Buy prompt.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Ask to Buy, when kids want to make an eligible purchase or download \u2014 such as downloading an app from the App Store, buying an in-app purchase, buying a TV show from Apple TV, or redownloading a shared app \u2014 they send a request to their parent or guardian,\u201d it reads.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe parent or guardian can use their own device to approve or decline the request. For example, if a child wants to download an app, the parent or guardian can view information about the app and decide whether to allow it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ask to Buy doesn\u2019t work as advertised<\/h2>\n

Seems like this has been a known issue for some time now. I found a thread on the Apple Support Community forums<\/a> dated October 2021 where a poster complains about the same issue. \u201cHow can I prevent my young son from reinstalling TikTok after I’ve deleted it? I have deleted it from the Home Screen, but he can reinstall it in the App Store without permission,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

\"Family<\/figure>\n

There\u2019s a similar thread on Reddit<\/a> started eleven years ago. I also found a thread on StackExchange<\/a> that\u2019s almost ten years old. This appears to be one of those weirdly persisting issues that just won\u2019t go away.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Apple hasn\u2019t fixed it. I can confirm that Ask to Buy doesn\u2019t pop up on my iPhone 16 Pro Max running iOS 18.5 software when I try to redownload a previously purchased app from group history from another device I\u2019ve set up with a child test account for troubleshooting purposes.<\/p>\n

Apple did bring one notable change in iOS 18.5: Parents now receive a notification when the Screen Time passcode is used on a child’s device<\/a>. So if your junior figures out the Screen Time passcode and tries to use it to turn off Ask to Buy, you\u2019ll be alerted without having to check the Family Sharing setting every once in a while.<\/p>\n

Screen Time Ask to Buy authorization doesn\u2019t work for redownloads<\/h2>\n

But the Screen Time passcode notification does nothing to fix the Ask to Buy problem that Seb and many other parents using Family Sharing are having, without even realizing it. I\u2019ve been using Family Sharing for years now, but haven\u2019t known about this workaround\u2014perhaps because I don\u2019t have kids!<\/p>\n

\"iPhone<\/figure>\n

Being able to browse everyone\u2019s downloads and redownload any app from family purchase history has been one of the staples of Family Sharing.<\/p>\n

But lack of Ask to Buy authentication for Family Sharing redownloads initiated from child accounts sounds like a serious omission. I mean, that’s the whole point of Screen Time restrictions on App Store downloads.<\/p>\n

Look, the fact that a child account can access and view family download history isn\u2019t an issue in and of itself\u2014redownloading without approval is.<\/p>\n

When will Apple fix this?<\/h2>\n

Whether this is by design or an engineering oversight, Apple should clearly do something about this. Unfortunately, this is a company with a long history of leaving stupid bugs like this lingering for years, so I\u2019m not overly optimistic.<\/p>\n

I did leave Apple feedback<\/a> about it, and I suggest you do the same. The more people tell Apple about this issue, the higher the chances it gets escalated and actually brought to the attention of Apple\u2019s product quality teams.<\/p>\n

If you use Family Sharing, assume your children are aware they can easily bypass your Screen Time restrictions and redownload any apps from family purchase history without Ask to Buy getting in the way.<\/p>\n

Source link: https:\/\/www.idownloadblog.com\/2025\/05\/19\/apple-family-sharing-screen-time-ask-to-buy-authorization-workaround-restrictions-parental-controls-iphone-ipad-mac-download-apps-ask-to-buy-not-working-properly\/<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apple\u2019s Family Sharing parental controls and Screen Time restrictions can be bypassed to redownload apps without Ask to Buy authorization with a workaround. Like most parents, iDownloadBlog owner Sebastien has set up Family Sharing on family members\u2019 devices. This convenient built-in feature allows everyone to share resources like iCloud storage, subscriptions, apps, media and more. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":172890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-allnews","category-appleindustrynews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/midatlanticconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/midatlanticconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/midatlanticconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midatlanticconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midatlanticconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172889"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/midatlanticconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":172891,"href":"https:\/\/midatlanticconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172889\/revisions\/172891"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midatlanticconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/midatlanticconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midatlanticconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midatlanticconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}