How to Turn off Parental Controls on iPhone

The iPhone's built-in Parental Control features are a great tool for parents to protect their kids, but as kids mature, you'll probably want to tweak the settings to provide more options to them. Whether you need to just tweak them or disable them completely, here's how to turn off Parental Controls on iPhone.

There are two major kinds of Parental Controls on the iPhone: Screen Time and Content Restrictions. Screen Time offers a wider set of controls, of which Content Restrictions are just one. This article covers the Content Restrictions tools specifically.

How to Turn off Parental Controls on iPhone

To completely turn off Parental Controls on the iPhone and iPod touch, follow these steps on the device you want to disable the settings on.

1. Tap Settings > Screen Time.

   Screen Time was introduced with iOS 12. In earlier versions of iOS, look for the Restrictions feature found in the General menu. The steps to turn them off are similar to turning off Screen Time.

2. Tap Content & Privacy Restrictions.

   To turn off all Screen Time settings here, tap Turn Off Screen Time. However, you may want to keep Screen Time on to continue to limit how much your kids can use their iPhones.

3. Toggle the Content & Privacy Restrictions slider to off/white to turn off Parental Controls.

How to Turn off Only Some Parental Controls on iPhone

Want more nuanced options for controlling what content and apps you allow your kids to use and what you block? Try these steps.

1. Tap Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions. From here, you can tap any menu to control the settings in that section. The steps below explain each setting.

   You may need to enter the Screen Time passcode for this device, if you use one, before you can change these settings.

2. Tap iTunes & App Store Purchases to control whether your kid can install apps and make purchases at Apple's stores. Choose to Allow or Don't Allow for settings like Installing Apps and In-app Purchases.

3. Want to prevent your kids from using certain pre-installed Apple apps? Tap Allowed Apps and tap the slider for any app you want to block to off/white.

4. Tap Content Restrictions to set limits on the maturity of the content your kid will be able to access.

   • Allowed Store Content: Lets you choose the rating level for your country or region, whether you'll allow explicit language in music and podcasts, and what maturity rating you'll allow for content from the iTunes, App, and Apple Books Stores.
   • Web Content: Allow you to block adult websites or create a set of websites that are the only ones you child can access.
   • Siri: Lets you choose whether Siri can search the web and whether Siri can use explicit language or not.
   • Game Center: Controls whether your kid can play multiplayer games that use Game Center, add Friends in Game Center, or record their screen during gameplay.

5. The Privacy settings let you choose whether apps can access data from the iPhone.

   How to Protect Private Info Stored on Your iPhone

6. In the Allow Changes section, you can choose whether your child can make changes, or can't, to settings related to the device passcode, volume limit settings, Do Not Disturb While Driving, and more.