To check your child's screen time on iPhone, open Settings → Screen Time and tap See All App & Website Activity. If you use Family Sharing, do it from your own phone: Settings → Screen Time → your child's name. You'll see daily and weekly totals, the most used apps, how often the phone was picked up and which apps sent the most notifications. Below is how to find the report, how to read it, and how to turn what you learn into sensible limits.
Where to find the Screen Time report
On your own iPhone (with Family Sharing)
- Open Settings → Screen Time.
- Under Family, tap your child's name.
- Tap See All App & Website Activity.
- Switch between Week and Day at the top.
This is the easiest route: you can check without asking for your child's phone. If your child isn't in your family yet, our Family Sharing guide shows how to add them.
On your child's iPhone
- Open Settings → Screen Time on their phone.
- Tap See All App & Website Activity.
- Choose Week or Day.
If your child has an iPad too, check that Share Across Devices is switched on in Screen Time, so the report includes both. You can choose a single device from the Devices menu in the report.
The weekly report
Screen Time also sends a weekly report notification summarising the past week, with the total compared to the week before. If you manage your child's Screen Time through Family Sharing, you can see their weekly summary from your phone too. It's a good moment for a quick check, once a week, rather than looking every day.
How to read the report (free, built in)
The report has several sections. These are the ones worth your attention.
Total screen time and the daily pattern
The bar chart shows usage across the day or week. Look at when usage happens as much as how much. Two hours spread through the afternoon is a different story from two hours after 10 pm.
Most used apps and categories
The Most Used list breaks time down by app and by category, such as Social, Games or Entertainment. Tap an app to see its daily average and its age rating. This is where you'll spot a new app you didn't know about.
Pickups and first pickup
Pickups counts how often the phone was picked up, and shows which app was opened first. A very early first pickup or a late last one is a useful hint about sleep.
Notifications
This shows which apps send the most notifications. Turning notifications off for a couple of noisy apps often reduces pickups without any arguments.
Things to keep in mind
- The report shows time, not content. It won't tell you which videos were watched or who your child messaged.
- Websites are listed by domain when Safari is used. Browsers inside other apps may count towards that app instead.
- Video calls and music playing in the background may count, which can make totals look higher than "real" use.
Turning what you see into limits
Checking is only useful if it leads somewhere. A simple routine:
- Look at one week, not one day. A single long day after a sleepover tells you little.
- Pick the one or two things that bother you most, such as late-night use or one app eating the afternoon.
- Set a matching rule. Late nights call for Downtime (bedtime and Downtime guide). One app taking over calls for an App Limit (how to set Screen Time limits). An app you don't want at all can be blocked (how to block apps on a child's iPhone).
- Talk about it. Show your child the report together. Kids are often surprised by their own numbers, and it makes the new rule feel less arbitrary.
- Check again next week and adjust.
If the totals suddenly drop to almost nothing, it may be good news, or it may mean Screen Time stopped recording or a workaround was found. See Screen Time not working and how kids bypass Screen Time.
What Screen Time reports don't tell you
Apple's report answers "how much" well. It is less helpful for questions like:
- Is my child trying to get around the rules? The report shows usage, not attempts to open apps that are limited or blocked.
- Are the rules actually working? A low total for a blocked app looks the same whether your child ignored it or tried to open it repeatedly.
- Is the report from the right device? Totals can be split across devices or missing if sharing is off.
Seeing blocked attempts with Skydo
Skydo is an iPhone parental-control app built on Apple's own Screen Time technology (Family Controls). It adds a different kind of insight on top of Apple's report:
- A blocked-attempts count, showing how often your child tried to open something you've blocked. A falling number usually means the rule has been accepted; a rising one is worth a conversation.
- A weekly report to glance at alongside the blocked-attempts count.
- The controls to act on it: block chosen apps or whole categories such as social media, set a daily time limit and bedtime, run School Mode during school hours, use Homework Mode, block adult websites in Safari and search, and prevent installing or deleting apps.
- Changes from your phone. Pair once with an 8-character code and adjust bedtime, limits and school hours or pause all apps for 30 minutes from your iPhone; changes reach your child's phone in seconds. See how to control your child's iPhone from your phone.
Honest limits
Skydo doesn't replace Apple's detailed usage charts. It doesn't show a minute-by-minute breakdown of every app, so many parents keep using the Screen Time report for that and Skydo for blocking and attempts. Skydo needs to be installed and set up on your child's iPhone (iOS 26.5 or later). It's free to download, and protection needs a Skydo Premium subscription, monthly or yearly; one subscription bought on your phone also unlocks your child's phone.
A weekly five-minute check
- Open the report for the past week.
- Note the total, the top three apps and the latest usage time.
- Compare with last week.
- Change at most one rule.
- Tell your child what you noticed, good things included.
Kept short and regular, this works better than a big crackdown after a bad week. If you're still building your setup, the parental controls checklist covers the rest.