Apple allows you to employ restrictions for various features apps and features on an iPhone and these restrictions can be a great way of limiting content that’s accessible by your children, so you can be sure they aren’t influenced by something that’s inappropriate for their age. You can also use some of these restrictions to prevent apps from gaining access to your location, what you’re up to, or something that’s on your iPhone.
As your kids grow up, you might want to ease down on the restrictions you have set for them and for your other devices as well. With so many restrictions in place, you might lose track of which ones are active currently and what do you do to take control of them. In this post, we’ll help you understand and turn off several restrictions that are available on your iPhone.
Turn Off Content & Privacy Restrictions
To limit activity and content on other devices like your child’s iPhone or iPad, Apple allows you to set restrictions on content that’s consumed and their privacy. These restrictions include limitations on the content being watched, purchases on the App Store, Web content, use of Siri, access given to apps and features on iOS, and other privacy-related options. If you want to completely turn OFF all the restrictions you have set for your secondary device or your child’s iPad/iPhone, then you can do that by simply turning this feature off.
To disable Content & Privacy Restrictions, open the Settings app on your iPhone and select the ‘Screen Time’ option.
Inside Screen Time, scroll down and select the ‘Content & Privacy Restrictions’ option.
You might be asked to enter a Screen Time passcode if you had set one prior to this.
On the next screen, toggle OFF the ‘Content & Privacy Restrictions’ option.
This will disable all restrictions that are in place on your iPhone or secondary device, giving it access to everything the device is capable of.
If you want to keep the ‘Content & Privacy Restrictions’ option enabled but want to individually lift-off restrictions for different categories on your iPhone, you can check out the next few sections.
Turn Off App Store Purchase Restrictions
If you have a bunch of secondary devices that you or others in your family use and you previously restricted any of those devices to purchase an app/game from the App Store or items from iTunes, then you can disable those restrictions by first opening the Settings app and going to ‘Screen Time’.
On the next screen, scroll down and select the ‘Content & Privacy Restrictions’ option.
You might be asked to enter a Screen Time passcode if you had set one prior to this.
Now, tap on the ‘iTunes & App Store Purchases’ option.
If you want to allow others to make purchases on their devices, tap on ‘In-app Purchases’ and select the ‘Allow’ option.
If you haven’t allowed such functionality for ‘Installing App’ and ‘Deleting Apps’ on other devices, you can also select either of these features and choose ‘Allow’ to turn off the restrictions you might have set before.
Note: We’d advise you to keep the ‘Require Password’ section to be set as ‘Always Require’ to make sure apps aren’t installed automatically and purchases aren’t made quickly.
Turn Off Apps and Feature Restrictions
Apple also allows you to limit what apps and feature your linked devices have access to. If you previously had set restrictions for the use of built-in apps or features on an iPhone, here’s how you can disable them. Enabling access to these apps and features won’t require you to install them back or update them to the latest version since Apple only temporarily hid the features from the restricted iPhone/iPad when you disabled them before.
To get to this restrictions screen open the Settings app and go to Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions.
Now, select the ‘Allowed Apps’ section on this screen.
You will now see a list of apps and features you may have enabled/disabled on a device. To disable all restrictions, enable all the toggles available on this screen. You can also individual disable a restriction and keep the others enabled by only toggling ON the feature you want to lift a limit from.
Turn Off Explicit Content Restrictions
Similar to app restrictions, Apple provides ways to limit the content that’s being watched on all your devices. You can set restrictions for preventing when explicit content or content with specific ratings is played on an iPhone/iPad/Mac.
If you no longer want to restrict explicit content and content ratings, go to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions.
Here, tap on the ‘Content Restrictions’ option.
Inside this screen, choose what you want to turn off restrictions from under the ‘Allowed Store Content’ section.
Music, Podcasts, News & Workouts: Choose from Clean or Explicit, the latter gives access to all content.
Music Videos: Set to ON to disable restrictions.
Music Profiles: Set to ON to disable restrictions.
Movies: Choose ‘Allow All Movies’ to give access to all titles that are available for viewing.
TV shows: Choose ‘Allow All TV Shows’ to give access to all titles that are available for you to watch.
Books: Choose from Clean or Explicit, the latter gives access to all content.
Apps: Choose ‘Allow All Apps’ to lift restrictions on apps.
Turn Off Web Content Restrictions
Once enabled, you can restrict others from accessing specific websites or unapproved ones. If you want your devices to access more websites, you can do so by going to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions.
Here, tap on the ‘Content Restrictions’ option.
On the next screen, scroll down and select the ‘Web Content’ option.
Inside the ‘Web Content’ screen. Choose the option that best suits your preferences. You can choose the option that’s right for you depending on whether you want to give your device access to all websites or add access to more websites than the ones that were previously approved.
Unrestricted Access: Selecting this will allow you unrestricted access to all websites.
Limit Adult Websites: You can use this setting to allow your devices access to all websites except for the ones that show adult content. You can add websites under ‘Always Allow’ to approve them and ‘Never Allow’ to restrict them.
Allows Websites Only: If you want to allow access to more websites instead of all, you can select this option and then add websites under ‘Always Allow’ to approve them and ‘Never Allow’ to restrict them.
Apple lets you prevent you from using Siri to access web content or showing explicit language when suggesting results. If you had previously put restrictions to Siri on your Apple devices, you can lift them off by going to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions.
On this screen, tap on the ‘Content Restrictions’ option.
Web Search Content: You can control Siri whether or not it can get you results after searching the web. For this, go to the ‘Siri’ section and tap on the ‘Web Search Content’ option. Choose ‘Allow’ on the next screen and come back to the previous screen.
Explicit Language: You can choose if Siri uses Explicit Language to give you results for something you asked. Under Siri, select ‘Explicit Language’ and choose allow.
Turn Off Game Center Restrictions
If you somehow enabled restrictions inside Game Center for your child’s iPhone or your secondary device, you can disable them by following the steps below.
First, open the Settings app and go to Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions.
Here, tap on the ‘Content Restrictions’ option.
You can then choose ‘Allow’ to enable all the features inside Game Center and turn them on one by one.
Multiplayer Games: Limit restrictions by choosing either ‘Allow with friends only’ or ‘Allow with everyone’, the latter letting you and others using your devices play with anyone online.
Adding Friends: Choose ‘Allow’ to give access to adding anyone as a friend.
Connect with Friends: Choose ‘Allow’ to give access to converse with a friend.
Screen Recording: Select ‘Allow’ to let the device record your screen during a game.
Nearby Multiplayer: Allow users to play multiplayer in nearby settings.
Private Messaging: Choose ‘Allow’ to give the device the ability to send or receive messages with game and friend invites.
Profile Privacy Changes: Choose ‘Allow’ to give the device ability to change their profile’s privacy settings.
Avatar & Nickname Changes: Choose ‘Allow’ to let anyone using the device the means to change Game Center avatars and nicknames.
Turn Off Privacy Restrictions
iOS let you modify access to some privacy settings that some apps may access or request. These limitations include the ability to access location, contacts, calendars, photos, microphone, and other elements of your iPhone. If you had enabled any of these restrictions in the past, you can turn these off by going to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions.
On the next screen, scroll down to the ‘Privacy’ section and configure these restrictions individually.
Location Services: Choose ‘Allow Changes’ to let any new apps and websites use your location.
Contacts: Choose ‘Allow Changes’ to let apps access your Contacts info.
Calendars: Choose ‘Allow Changes’ to give apps access to your Calendar.
Reminders: Choose ‘Allow Changes’ to give apps your Reminders information.
Photos: Choose ‘Allow Changes’ to let apps access your photos and additionally set what’s visible to each of the apps.
Share My Location: Choose ‘Allow’ to allow location sharing from Messages and Find My Friends.
Bluetooth sharing: Choose ‘Allow Changes’ to let devices and apps share data through Bluetooth.
Microphone: Choose ‘Allow Changes’ to allow apps to request access to your microphone.
Speech Recognition: Choose ‘Allow Changes’ and let apps access Speech Recognition or Dictation on your iPhone.
Advertising: Choose ‘Allow’ to allow changes to be made to your advertising settings.
Media & Apple Music: Choose ‘Allow Changes’ to let apps access your photos, videos, or music
library.
Turn Off Other Settings Restrictions
Besides some privacy settings, iOS also employs restrictions when dealing with other settings like changes to passcode, account, mobile data, sound sounds, DND mode, TV provider, and background app activities. Depending on how you want them configured, you can set all or some of them to ‘Allow’ to prevent restrictions.
To get to these controls, go to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions.
On the next screen, scroll down to the ‘Allow Changes’ section and configure these restrictions individually.
Passcode Changes: Choose ‘Allow’ only if you’re completely willing to let apps change your passcode.
Account Changes: Choose ‘Allow’ to let changes be made when adding removing or modifying accounts inside Accounts & Passwords.
Mobile Data Changes:
Choose ‘Allow’ to let changes be made to cellular data settings on a device.
Reduce Sound Sounds: Choose ‘Allow’ to let your iPhone prevent you from going beyond safe listening volumes.
Do Not Disturb While Driving: Choose ‘Allow’ to allow changes to be made to Do Not Disturb While Driving.
TV Provider: Choose ‘Allow’ to make changes to TV provider settings.
Background App
Activities: Choose ‘Allow’ to control whether or not apps run in the background.
Turn Off Restrictions for Apps Access
While the above settings were strictly for controlling what other devices that are connected to your account access them, the restrictions we’re going to show here are those that are in place on your own iPhone. Apple allows you to limit apps from gaining access to different iOS apps and features like Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Photos, Bluetooth, local network, microphone, speech recognition, camera, health data, files and folders, media, and more.
To access these controls, open the Settings app and select the ‘Privacy’ option on the screen.
Inside Privacy, you should all the labels that you can restrict for various apps on your iPhone. Tap on any category where you want to see whether apps have access to it.
Once you’re inside a category, you should see a list of apps that have requested access to a particular setting. You can turn off restrictions for an app by toggling ON the switch adjacent to the app that you want to enable access to.
Turn Off Restrictions for App Tracking
Apple lets you deny app tracking requests automatically by default when they’re installed. You can, however, give these apps the ability to send you requests so that they can track your activity across other apps and websites.
Note: We’d suggest you keep this setting disabled for the sake of your data’s security and privacy.
If you still want to allow this feature, open the Settings app and go to ‘Privacy’.
Inside the ‘Privacy’ screen, tap on the ‘Tracking’ option.
On the next screen, toggle ON the ‘Allow Apps to request to track’ feature to limit the tracking restrictions.
Turn Off Notification Restrictions
If you previously limited notifications from an app on your iPhone, you can take off those restrictions by opening the Settings app and then selecting the ‘Notifications’ option on the screen.
On this screen, select an app you want to remove notification restrictions from under the ‘Notification Style’ section.
When the App’s notification settings appear, toggle ON the ‘Allow Notifications’ option at the top to allow all notifications.
Additionally, you can enable different notification styles for the selected app by enabling Lock Screen, Notification Centre, and Banners under ‘Alerts’.
You can modify other apps by repeating the same steps as the ones mentioned above. This is how you can remove restrictions for app notifications on iOS.
That’s all we have on disabling restrictions on your iPhone.
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