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Door staff@engadget.com (Gabriela Vătu) - 10 Oct 2026
The iOS 27 update in September was headlined by Siri AI, but there are also a lot of little feature enhancements throughout the new OS. One that you might have missed is an overhaul of parental controls. For these changes, Apple worked alongside the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to bring new safety tools. They also created a Building Healthy Digital Habits companion guide to aid parents in creating healthy digital habits for their kids, balancing screen usage with essentials like sleep, exercise, schoolwork and family time.
Among the new parental control features introduced are Time Allowances, Ask to Browse, Ask to Add Contacts, a Pause Device feature and expanded Communication Safety. The setup process has also been simplified, offering age-appropriate app recommendations for new child accounts, rather than dumping every default app onto a kid's home screen.
However, these features don't activate automatically when a device updates. Every device in a Family Sharing group (whether it's an iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch or Apple TV) needs to be running iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, or tvOS 27 before the new Screen Time system will function. Devices that can't be updated will continue using the older iOS 26 controls, which creates a gap for families with older hardware. If you haven't updated your devices yet, walk through the preparation steps for a major software update and install them all.
Among the new parental control features introduced are Time Allowances, Ask to Browse, Ask to Add Contacts, a Pause Device feature and expanded Communication Safety. The setup process has also been simplified, offering age-appropriate app recommendations for new child accounts, rather than dumping every default app onto a kid's home screen.
However, these features don't activate automatically when a device updates. Every device in a Family Sharing group (whether it's an iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch or Apple TV) needs to be running iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, or tvOS 27 before the new Screen Time system will function. Devices that can't be updated will continue using the older iOS 26 controls, which creates a gap for families with older hardware. If you haven't updated your devices yet, walk through the preparation steps for a major software update and install them all.