Document: WR-014                                                 P. Webb
                                                              2026.01.04

               Workarounds Apple’s ScreenTime Workarounds

Body

   Teenagers think ScreenTime isn’t for them and will figure out a
   way around them. They forget that we millennials used the internet
   decades before they were even a thought. Anyway.

   

   A popular method is to change the date and time. This is particularly
   stressing when your teen has an iPhone and a MacBook.

   From your teen’s MacBook, head to System Settings → General → Date &
   Time. Ensure "Set time and date automatically" is checked. For us, it
   was not, the date was set several weeks back and the time was totally
   off. Restoring the time and date will also fix an issue in Screen
   Time where you might see a message stating that your teen’s computer
   cannot be seen or whatever.

   Now you’ll want to head to Users & Groups. From there, you can see if
   they are an Admin[1]. We don’t want that. Create a new Admin
   account for you, log out of your teen’s account, log into your’s, go
   to the same place in settings, and change their account to
   Standard. You also want to uncheck "Allow this user to administer
   this computer."

   As for iOS, go into your Settings → Family → Teen’s Name → Screen
   Time → App Limits. You probably have a bunch of limits in here
   already but you should add the Shortcuts app. For whatever reason,
   there’s a way to circumvent limits with certain shortcuts that can be
   easily downloaded from the internet. If your teen is an active user
   of Shortcuts, they’ll just have to suffer until they move out.