Apple previews its biggest parental controls update in years, weeks before UK and US regulatory deadlines

Apple previewed a suite of new parental controls at WWDC 2026 on Monday, introducing tools that give parents more granular authority over what their children can see, who they can contact, and how long they can spend in apps. The updates, arriving this autumn with iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, land on the same day UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer gave Apple and Google a three-month deadline to introduce device-level controls that prevent children from viewing or sharing explicit images. The US Congress is also advancing the Kids Online Safety Act, which cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee in March alongside a wave of school-district lawsuits over social media addiction.

The headline addition is Ask to Browse, a feature that requires children to request parental permission before accessing a new website in Safari. It works across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and pairs with the existing Ask to Buy system that already gates App Store downloads. Together, the two controls mean parents can require approval for both apps and web content from a single child account.

Apple is also introducing Time Allowances, which let parents set daily limits across entire app categories, including Entertainment, Games, and Social Media, rather than managing individual apps one by one. The system provides age-based recommendations informed by expert research as a starting point. Parents can also create daily Schedules that restrict access to specific apps at particular times, such as during school hours or meals.

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Communication Safety, which already blurs nudity when detected in Messages and FaceTime calls for users under 18, will now also block gore and violent content in shared images and videos. The expansion addresses a gap that critics had identified in Apple’s existing protections. The feature uses on-device machine learning to detect harmful content before it is displayed, consistent with Apple’s broader privacy architecture that keeps sensitive processing on the device rather than routing it through external servers.

The redesigned Screen Time gives parents an at-a-glance view of their children’s average device usage and most-used apps, with the ability to adjust access with a single tap. Parents can quickly limit access during family moments or extend time if a child needs to finish something in an app. The interface replaces what had become, since Apple first introduced Screen Time in iOS 12, a dense settings menu that many parents found difficult to navigate.

Apple said it is working with the American Academy of Pediatrics to adapt the AAP’s Family Media Plan into a guide parents can reference when configuring their devices. The company also announced developer tools, including a Declared Age Range API that lets apps request a child’s age bracket without revealing their birthday, and PermissionKit, which allows apps to route new-contact requests through parents for approval. A SensitiveContentAnalysis framework helps developers detect nudity and violence within their own apps.

The timing carries regulatory weight. Starmer’s ultimatum, delivered at London Tech Week on 8 June, demands that Apple and Google implement controls preventing children from taking, sending, receiving, or viewing nude images at the device level. Apple’s existing Communication Safety system warns rather than blocks in some scenarios, and does not cover every image-sharing pathway across the operating system. Whether the new features satisfy Starmer’s requirements remains to be seen. The UK government has indicated it will legislate if the companies do not comply voluntarily.

In the United States, KOSA cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee on 5 March in a party-line 28-24 vote, while the Senate simultaneously passed an updated COPPA 2.0 unanimously. The legislation would require platforms to conduct risk assessments, enable the strongest privacy settings for minors by default, and give parents meaningful oversight tools. Apple has publicly endorsed KOSA, and the broader litigation landscape around child safety has produced billions of dollars in settlements and verdicts against social media companies in 2026 alone.

The child safety updates are part of a broader WWDC 2026 software rollout that includes the Siri AI rebuild, Apple Intelligence enhancements, and performance improvements across iOS 27. A child account, required for users under 13 and available for those up to 18, enables age-appropriate protections system-wide from the moment the device is set up. Parents are guided through account creation during the initial device setup and can choose to start their child with just a few essential apps, a curated set, or a custom selection.

Apple’s vice president of Health and Fitness, Sumbul Desai, said the company’s approach is grounded in the belief that every child is unique. The tools are designed to let parents tailor protections rather than impose a single standard. Whether that philosophy of parental discretion satisfies regulators who are increasingly demanding mandatory, device-level enforcement is the question Apple will need to answer before Starmer’s deadline arrives in September.