The centerpiece is a feature called Ask to Browse. When it’s turned on, a child has to request permission before opening a new website in Safari, the same way Ask to Buy has long worked for app downloads. A request pops up on the parent’s phone, and you approve or decline with a tap.

Time Allowances replaces Apple’s old app limits with something more flexible. Parents can set time budgets by category, such as Games, Entertainment and Social Media, and create daily schedules that make certain apps unavailable during school hours or other periods set by parents. If your child needs 20 more minutes to finish a project, you can grant a one-time extension from your phone instead of rewriting the whole rule. Apple says the suggested time budgets are informed by expert research on child development, but parents set the actual numbers.

The rest of the package includes a redesigned Screen Time dashboard that shows your child’s average usage and most-used apps at a glance, a simpler setup process for Child Accounts and an expansion of Communication Safety, which now blurs violent and graphic content in addition to nudity. Child Accounts, which are required for kids under 13 and can stay in place until 18, automatically apply age-appropriate protections like adult website restrictions and age-based App Store limits.

Apple is working with the American Academy of Pediatrics to adapt the AAP’s Family Media Plan into a guide parents can use when setting up their kids’ devices. The Family Media Plan is a free tool the AAP has offered since 2016 at HealthyChildren.org. It walks families through creating their own household media rules: screen-free zones like the dinner table and bedrooms, a one-screen-at-a-time rule, turning off autoplay and notifications and choosing quality content over apps designed to keep kids scrolling. The Apple version, which hasn’t been published yet, will translate that pediatrician guidance directly into the settings on your child’s phone.

The partnership is well timed because the AAP’s thinking on screen time has evolved. For years, parents heard hard numbers: no screens before 18 months except video chatting, one hour of high-quality programming for ages 2 to 5, consistent limits after that. Those age guidelines still stand for young children, but the AAP’s newest recommendations, released this year, move away from hour counts for older kids. Instead, the group emphasizes quality, context and conversation, asking parents to consider what their child is watching, why and whether screens are crowding out sleep, physical activity and family time. 

Which brings me to the part no software can do for you: lead by example. The best way to build healthy screen time habits in your kids is to apply the rules to yourself. If the dinner table is a screen-free zone, your phone stays in the other room too. If devices go away an hour before bedtime, so does yours. Kids notice the difference between a rule and a double standard immediately, and they will call you on it. The AAP makes the same point. Its guidance asks parents to act as their child’s media mentor, and you can’t mentor behavior you don’t model. 

If you want to get a head start before the update arrives, sit down as a family and sketch out your own media plan at HealthyChildren.org. Decide on your screen-free zones and times together, and let the kids weigh in. Rules they help write are rules they’re more likely to keep. Then when iOS 27 lands this fall, expected in September alongside the new iPhones, the settings will simply enforce what your family already agreed to.

Apple is also launching a dedicated website for parents with setup guides and answers to common questions. Between that, the AAP partnership and controls that over the open web, this is the most parent-friendly update Apple has shipped in years. The tools are getting better, but will only work with you at the helm. 

Leslie Meredith has been writing about technology for more than a decade. As a mom of four, value, usefulness and online safety take priority. Have a question? Email Leslie at asklesliemeredith@gmail.com.