Apple today announced a sweeping set of updates aimed at helping parents protect kids and teens online, as part of its broader push to make Apple platforms safer, more transparent, and more age-aware. Here’s what’s coming.
The new features, many of which land with iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, visionOS 26, and tvOS 26 this fall, expand on existing parental controls and introduce smarter ways to manage Child Accounts, share age ranges with apps, and limit risky interactions.
Here’s Apple’s on the new tools:
These new tools build on the parental controls already available in Screen Time and on the App Store, and are designed to help parents navigate the risks of an increasingly complex digital world. Like all Apple features, they are built with privacy and security at the core.
Easier setup and stronger defaults for Child Accounts
Apple has long offered Child Accounts through Family Sharing, but now the setup process is more streamlined. With iOS 18.4 and newer, default child-safety settings are applied immediately, even if parents choose to finish setting up account settings at a later time.
In iOS 26, the system will proactively guide parents to confirm their kid’s birthdate and convert the account into a Child Account, if needed. That unlocks the full suite of parental controls.
Share a child’s age range with apps, privately
One of the standout additions is a new way for parents to share a child’s age range, rather than an exact birthdate, with apps. This will allow developers to deliver age-appropriate experiences, while preserving the child’s privacy.
Through the new Declared Age Range API, developers can request this info, and parents get fine-grained control over what’s shared: always, per-request, or never. Kids can’t change these settings without parental approval, and Apple says this system avoids unnecessary data collection for basic apps like weather or sports scores.
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