The new iOS 13.3 update brings parental controls to track and limit how much time your child talks on the phone, FaceTimes, or text messages, as well as control your kid’s contact list.
Communication Limits lets parents better manage how much time their kids spend on the phone by limiting how long they’re allowed to talk to their friends on the phone on a weeknight, for instance, or banning them from text messaging while they should be studying.
The feature also allows you full control over the contact list so you can see who communicates with your child. Parents can use the “Allowed Screen Time” feature to choose “everyone” or “contacts only” when it comes to who can communicate with your child via phone, FaceTime, text message, or iCloud.
The new Communication Limits feature is just one of many Screen Time iOS functions meant to limit the amount of time we are spending on our phones and our favorite apps, which also double as a means for parental control.
Screen Time keeps track of how much time you spend on your phone, how much is spent in specific apps, and even how many times you pick up your phone every day.
If you want to take a look at your Screen Time data, open Screen Time from Settings, then tap the graph to open the full report on your stats. From here, you can see when you used your phone, on which apps, and how for long for. Screen Time data shows up to 30 days of usage data, and you can compare week over week results as well.
App Limits on Screen Time allow you to combine specific apps or certain app categories — such as social media apps — that you can choose particular time limits.
iOS 13.3 was released as the ninth iteration of iOS 13, and the latest update features other handy improvements as well. You can now like or dislike news stories within Apple News, and there are now “breaking” and “developing” labels for top stories.
Bug issues that were fixed include an issue that caused screenshots to look blurry when sent in a message, an issue where the missed call badge would not clear, and a bug that Cellular Data setting may incorrectly be shown as off.