Apple's Screen Time feature fails to secure settings on MacBook Air
- Parents have implemented Apple's Screen Time to manage their children's digital use, including scheduled downtime.
- They discovered vulnerabilities in the settings, particularly allowing changes on a MacBook Air without requiring a passcode.
- The family seeks a solution to enhance the security of these settings to prevent changes without authorization.
In recent days, a family has been grappling with challenges related to Apple's Screen Time settings, particularly concerning their daughter's devices. The parents set up Screen Time to enforce bedtimes automatically by scheduling downtimes for their children. However, they discovered that the schedule for their daughter's downtime frequently deactivates itself. Initially checking the settings on her iPhone and iPad revealed that encountering these options required a passcode. In a troubling twist, the daughter's MacBook Air, however, allowed her to access Screen Time settings without any code, enabling her to disable the scheduled downtimes for specific days. When attempting to change the Schedule dropdown, the system did correctly prompt for a passcode, but simply toggling the downtime off for individual days posed a significant breach in security. The family is now left questioning the reliability of Apple's security in this particular feature and whether there is a possibility to alter this concerning behavior to require a passcode for any setting alterations, regardless of the device being used. They are seeking solutions and hoping for improvements to Apple's software to protect their children's screen time better.