Child protection: iOS 26 and Co. expand functions for parents

With its new operating systems in autumn, Apple also introduces new opportunities to protect offspring. Parents can manage children’s accounts more easily and apps are given the opportunity to adapt their content based on the age of the users.

Management of the family group

When setting up a children’s account, child protection functions will be activated by default in the future, which already applies from iOS 18.4, Ipados 18.4 and MacOS 15.4. The parents can then end the set-up later. From iOS 26, parents are guided through an age check and then automatically connect the children’s account to the family group-including the known protective functions such as screen time. Visionos 26 and Watchos 26 are also supported.

The App Store gets finer age settings by the end of the year: 13+, 16+ and 18+. There are a total of five “animals” that developers can determine to classify their apps. Depending on the setting, this is linked to different restrictions.

Check the chat partner in other apps

In the future, it will also be possible to share age information with apps. This is done in a safe way. A precise date of birth does not have to be entered, instead an age range is transmitted via the “Declared Age Range API”. Parents can hire whether the age cohort is always, on request or never transmitted. Children cannot change this themselves. The control of new communication partners is also new. Parents can determine who is let through-both in the news app and a new permission kit, also more and more third-party apps. After all, the App Store no longer advertises content that does not match the children’s settings. Such apps do not appear in lists either.

In the past, there had always been problems with screen time – the offspring always came up with new ideas to “chop” Apple’s protection. There were always updates relatively promptly, but you should not rely on the purely technical solution. It makes more sense to talk to the children and, above all, to create mutual trust in the use of technology.