Apple has announced that it will introduce better parent control with its iOS 26 updates later this year. A few days after the launch of the Developers Conference (WWDDC 2025) worldwide, Apple announced that it would improve the establishment of children’s accounts. The company is also introducing more granular age ratings to the App Store, and parents will be able to share their child’s age limit with an app so they can only see the appropriate content of age. Communication boundaries will allow parents to approve contacts for children, a feature that will also be helped at third party apps.
iOS enable the appropriate reservations of age for adolescents as 26
The company has explained in a newsroom post that it has paved the process of setting up a child account for children under the age of 13. A child’s account may be associated with a parent’s family group, which will automatically convert it into a child’s account. According to the company, this will allow parents to set appropriate boundaries for their child’s account on content or screen time.
Parents for the protection of the privacy of young consumers, parents will be able to provide apps for their child’s age limit (for example, 12 or less). Apps can use the newly declared range API, which allows apps to automatically level content levels that are suitable for young audience. Apple says that this feature does not share the exact range of age with a child’s birthday and third party requests.
The company’s post also emphasizes that these age boundaries will allow young users to access the appropriate content of age, without sharing sensitive information with the app store. Companies like Apple and Google have been under pressure to confirm the age of underage users at their respective app stores in the United States. Both companies have withdrawn, saying that collecting information from underage consumers can cause privacy concerns.
Apple is also expanding the limits of communication, enabling parents to approve their children’s requests when they want to communicate with new phone numbers using messages, phones, fee time, and iCloud apps. According to the iPhone maker, if the developers adopt the permit framework, these applications will also be supported in third party apps.
Although children’s accounts are designed to protect users under the age of 13, Apple says it will enforce similar “age appropriate reservations” for users under the age of 17, even if they set up a regular Apple account. The company is also adding three new age ratings (18+, 16+, and 13+) to the App Store that allows apps to provide maximum age rating for their apps. The company says the new rating will reach the end of 2025.
