Why app usage statistics aren’t available on iPhone

If the app doesn’t show how much time your child spent in each app on their iPhone, it’s not a bug or a malfunction. It’s a restriction imposed by Apple itself. Here’s why it exists — and where you can find this information instead.

How It Works

In 2021, Apple introduced a toolkit for parental control apps that was designed with privacy protection built directly into the system architecture.

Apps can set limits and restrictions, but they cannot see:

• which apps a child uses,
• how long they use them,
• or which websites they visit.

This information is encrypted and inaccessible to anyone outside the device — including developers and even Apple itself.

Technically, it works like this: when a parent selects apps to limit, Apple’s system sends our app anonymous encrypted tokens instead of actual app names. These tokens cannot be decoded.

As Apple explains, the system was specifically designed so that nobody outside the family group — including app developers and Apple — can know which apps or websites a child uses.

A Privacy Decision

Why did Apple choose this approach?

In short: privacy.

Before 2021, many parental control apps on iPhone relied on a corporate management tool originally created for company-owned employee devices. It gave apps deep access to phone data, including information about installed apps and usage activity.

Apple decided that using enterprise-level monitoring technology on children’s phones created privacy risks.

That’s why the company introduced Screen Time API — a system that allows parents to manage a child’s device without giving apps access to detailed usage data.

From Apple’s perspective, parental controls should allow families to set rules and boundaries — but not automatically grant access to every detail of a child’s digital life.

What This Means for You

In practice, this means that if your child uses an iPhone, our app cannot display statistics for individual apps.

This limitation applies to every parental control app in the App Store — not just ours.

At the same time, our app can still:

• set screen time limits and schedules;
• block specific apps;
• show your child’s location.

How to See App Usage Time

You can still access this information directly on Apple devices — Apple built detailed Screen Time statistics into iOS itself.

If your child’s device is connected to your Family Sharing group, you can see all app usage data from your own iPhone:

Settings → Screen Time → select your child’s name

There you’ll see:

• which apps your child used,
• how much time they spent in each app,
• daily and weekly statistics.

This information never leaves Apple’s ecosystem and is not shared with third-party apps — but it remains fully available to you as a parent.