I am taking a break from my spiritual thoughts to bring a PSA to parents with kids who have Apple phones and use their screen time restrictions for parental controls.
I have toggled off Safari and Siri use for my teenage son's phone. I basically want him to only have a flip phone but as I have an extra Apple phone laying around while his sister is on a mission, that is what he is using. I have been pretty happy with Apple's ability for me to go in and take off all the apps I don't think he needs (which is most of them.)
A couple of days ago he updated the operating system to iOS16 (as did most of his friends.) A couple hours later he told me there was a problem with the new update. While I had taken Internet searching totally off his phone, this new update put a search button on the home screen that brought up pictures from the internet of whatever he put in the search field.
My husband spent an hour on the phone with Apple trying to find a fix or roll the software back to the old software. They were able to remove the search button from the home screen (that is under Settings - Home Screen - then toggle off the search button on home screen option.) But the function of being able to search and have web images still came up when using the spotlight search (when you pull down from the middle of the home screen and there is a search bar. In the old iOS this is a great way to find an app or contact or other info on your phone. In the new it also was bringing up web images related to any word put in.)
I called Apple later that night and spent 90 minutes on the phone going over every single option under the screen time parental controls. Nothing worked to stop the web images from showing up. Finally my call got sent up to a supervisor named Casey. (The first guy was great but we just couldn't figure it out.)
Casey was like, "I think you have found a major gap in our software." I was like "ya think?" We finally did find a fix but it was not intuitive or easy to find. So I thought I'd share it here for anyone else in my boat.
First you have to go into the screen time content and privacy restriction to allowed apps and toggle on Safari and Siri. Then you have to go to the main Setting pager to Siri and Search. Then you go down to the Safari app in this and turn off the show in search button" (I am not an Apple Genius, so I am hoping I am remembering this correctly!) None of this part is secured by a parent passcode. So first check to make sure web images no longer come up when you search for ... flowers? If only photos of flowers come up from your photos you are good. If web images of flowers come up - call Apple support? If no web images come up then you need to go back to screen time content and privacy restrictions and to allowed apps and toggle safari and/or siri off again. That should remove the Safari app icon from Search and Siri menu on the main setting page if you just toggle off safari. If you toggle both off it should remove the search and siri button from the main setting page all together so your kid can't get in and turn it back on.
Ok I am not sure if that was clear enough to help. Let me know in the comments if you need more info. I guess I could take pictures or do a video?
By the way, Casey thanked me for calling. He said very few people do call in and that he would be escalating my issue to the engineers. He said it would likely be fixed (maybe in the next update?) and that it would be because of my phone call. Kudos to my son for pointing it out.
Spiritual thought of the day - we are living in a time of insidious spiritual warfare. Put on the whole armor of God everyday. Always put the first things first and make sure you (and your kids) are well acquainted with the shield of Faith and the Sword of the Spirit. These are your most critical tools to defend against and defeat the enemy.
