How to Set Screen Time Limits on Individual Apps in iOS 12

Sep. 21, 2018

When Apple firstannounced iOS 12at WWDC back in June this year, the company spent quite a lot of time talking about Screen Time — Apple’s feature to promote healthy usage of smartphones and prevent people from getting addicted to them. One of the many ways that Screen Time helps combat smartphone addiction is with App Limits. However, Screen Time has one big issue — it doesn’t let you add individual apps to limit usage on; at least not easily. That’s exactly what we’ll be solving today.

What Are App Limits?

First off though, whatareApp Limits in iOS? Well, put simply, App Limits let you set a time limit for apps that iOS then enforces. So, you can set a time limit of, say, 1 hour on Instagram, and then once you’ve Instagram for 1 hour in a day, iOS will not let you use the app until midnight (which is when the App Limits timer resets).

Now that iOS 12 has officially rolled out, I’m sure a lot of you have updated your iPhones to the latest version of iOS, and you may have noticed that when you try to add App Limits in Screen Time, it doesn’t let you add individual apps, and instead adds categories of apps. So while you may want to limit your Instagram usage, Screen Time will set App Limits on all Social Apps, which isn’t what we want.

However, there’s an easy workaround here. I tried this method on our iPhone X but it should work the same for the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR or even the older iPhone like iPhone 8, iPhone 7 etc. For an example, I’ll add an App Limit to Instagram; but you can do it on any app you want. Just follow the steps below:

That’s it, the app you’ve selected (Instagram, in my case) will now have the limit set, and will not work once the limit has been reached.

SEE ALSO:15 Best New iOS 12 Features You Should Know

Well that’s all you need to do in order to add App Limits on individual apps. So go ahead, and set up App Limits on apps that you use a lot and are (probably, maybe) addicted to. Also, if you have any other doubts regarding iOS 12 or any of its various features, let us know in the comments and we’ll get right on it.