My kids are a menace. At least, they are when they get their hands on my iPhone and iPad! Well, now that I think about it, they’re just all-around menaces. 🙂 I’d like to add some sort of restrictions to my iOS devices so that they can’t just go and buy stuff willy-nilly. This is possible, right? How do I enable content and purchase restrictions on my iPhone and iPad?
I can’t comment on your children being a menace to your iTunes Store bill since to do so will inevitably incriminate my own children too, though I have to admit that they’re good about asking before they make any in-app purchases. Still, the in-app purchase problem is sufficiently huge that there were some lawsuits a year or two back about unexpected — large — transactions on iTunes Store receipts!
Apple’s done a nice job of enabling a variety of parental controls in iOS 5, fortunately, ranging from the type of content that children (or anyone else without the necessary password) can purchase and view or download to whether purchases can be made at all.
Let’s have a look!
To start, go to “Settings” and tap on “General”. Now scroll down to “Restrictions”:
It’s confusing because on first glance it says “Off” so it seems like there’s nowhere to go from here, but the “>” on the right should be your clue that there’s more underneath this. A lot more. Tap on “Restrictions”…
Uh oh, as you can see from the top display, I don’t have restrictions enabled on my iOS device. To enable them, I need to tap on “Enable Restrictions”, which then causes the phone to prompt me for a secret code:
As a handy tip, if you have a lock code for your phone, it’s best not to use the same code for your restrictions access control, otherwise a day will come when you tell one of your children your iPhone’s lock code and, well, they can now get to anything they want!
Once you’ve entered the code — twice — you’ll have enabled restrictions and can make changes on an app-by-app basis:
I’m not a huge fan of YouTube for children (too much inappropriate junk) so I disable that one, along with turning off FaceTime:
Scroll down a bit and you’ll see there’s even more you can tweak and modify while you’re making changes. One useful change: disabling the ability to add or delete apps:
Finally, if you tap on “Movies” you’ll get a good sense for the more granular restrictions you can put in place:
Good luck with it all and with those menacing children!
I think the only option you have at this point is to “Restore” the iPad, which will mean you’ll need to reconfigure it and copy over all the music, photos, apps, movies, etc. again.
I have forgotten the code I put in for the restrictions on my daughters ipad. Is there anyway to recover it?
You forgot to mention that you can also turn off in-app purchases entirely, and that you can require that you enter your iTunes password before making any purchases, from the “restrictions” settings.
True, it might be a pain for you to have to enter your password every time you want to make a purchase, but it will stop your kids from “accidentally” buying something.
Also, my kids have their own iTunes accounts, which they can use to buy apps/music/whatever. However, they are funded solely by iTunes gift cards. There are no credit cards or any other source of money associated with those accounts, so they are limited to spending their own money.
And, I have not run into any problems with having apps from three different iTunes accounts on a single iPod.