Screen Time Options

In this lesson for What’s New in iOS 12 on the iPad, we look at the new Screen Time Report and Screen Time Options we have. With Screen Time, we can see how much time we are spending with an app, how many times we pick up our iPad, as well as how many notifications we receive throughout the day. We can also set limits on apps and app categories.

Accessing Screen Time
To access Screen Time, you go to the Settings App. There is a new setting in iOS 12 for Screen Time. When you tap on this, you’ll get access to all the Screen Time Reports and options.

Screen Time for All Devices
If you have multiple devices and they are signed into the same iCloud account, you’ll see all the Screen Time you’ve spent on all your devices. To narrow it down to a specific device, you tap on All Devices and then tap on Devices in the upper left corner. From there you can select which device you want to see the screen time you’ve spent.

Screen Time by App
To see how much screen time you’ve spent by app, tap on the chart. From there you can see when you’ve spent the most screen time on your iPad by the hour as well as which apps are most used. You can also see the same information over the last 7 days instead of today.

Viewing how many times your iPad has been Picked Up
Below Most Used you will see your pickup statistics. This includes how many times you’ve picked up your iPad by the hour or by day, which hours or days you’ve picked it up most in a chart, the total number of pickups, and when you had the most pickups.

Viewing how many Notifications your iPad has Received
You can also see how many notifications you receive per hour or per day on average, what hour or day you’ve received the most notifications in, and which apps you are receiving the most notifications from. Tap on any one of the apps in the list to go to that app’s notification settings to change them.

Setting iPad Downtime
If you are looking at your Screen Time by app, pickups, and notifications, tap on Screen Time in the upper left corner to get to Downtime. With Downtime, you can schedule time away from your iPad. During downtime, only apps that you choose to allow will be available. You will always receive phone calls. Tap on the start and end times to set downtime.

Setting App Limits
With App Limits, you can add limits to the amount of time you spend on an app category, such as Games. You can set individual limits for each day or just use the same limit for all the days.

Setting Apps that are Always Allowed
This is where you set which apps you want to always allow access to when using Downtime or if you select ‘All Apps & Categories’ when you apply app limits. The phone app is always available. All the other apps are selectable.

Setting Content & Privacy Restrictions
This setting allows you to block inappropriate content by ratings and block access to your information such as contacts or calendars.

Using a Screen Time Passcode
If you want to secure your Screen Time settings, you’ll want to use the Screen Time Passcode. This will also allow you to enter the passcode to add more time when you’ve hit a limit.

Share Screen Time Options Across Devices
If you have multiple devices, such as an iPad and an iPhone, when you select this, you’ll be able to see the screen time for all your devices. They do need to be signed into the same iCloud account for this feature to work.

Turn Off Screen Time
This does what it says, it turns off the Screen Time Option.

See this lesson in Action
If you want to see how this works in action, I show you how this all works in the video above.