Apple Unveils New Parental Controls Coming in iOS 26 and macOS Tahoe 26

Apple has announced a slate of new tools designed to help parents protect their children and teens online. The new features, which build on existing parental controls, were detailed at the company's recent Worldwide Developers Conference and will roll out this fall with the release of iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS Tahoe 26.

Managing a child's account is getting simpler. Apple has streamlined the setup process for Child Accounts, with some improvements already available in software updates like iOS 18.4 and macOS Sequoia 15.4. Parents will now be prompted to connect accounts for children under 13 to their Family Sharing group, which enables age-appropriate settings by default. Teens aged 13 to 17 will now also automatically receive protections like web content filters and Communication Safety, even if their Apple ID is not part of a Child Account.




A new Declared Age Range API will let parents share their child's age range with apps, providing tailored experiences without revealing the exact birth date. This works alongside more granular age ratings on the App Store, which will now be expanded to five categories, including 13+, 16+, and 18+, offering more nuance beyond the previous 12+ rating. Apps with age ratings that exceed a child's restrictions will be hidden from discovery areas like the Today, Games, and Apps tabs, as well as from editorial stories. Additionally, App Store product pages will now indicate if an app includes messaging, user-generated content, ads, or built-in parental controls.

Communication Limits are also expanding. Kids will now need to send a request to their parents before they can communicate with new phone numbers, an approval parents can grant with a single tap in Messages. When supported by third-party apps using Apple's new PermissionKit framework, kids can also send requests to connect with other users, which parents can approve just like messages or calls. Communication Safety is also being extended to detect nudity in FaceTime video calls and blur it in Shared Albums in Photos.

These updates build on a robust set of existing parental controls, including Ask to Buy for approving downloads and Find My for location sharing. Apple is also giving developers enhanced APIs to support these changes, including frameworks like PermissionKit for contact approvals, SensitiveContentAnalysis for nudity detection, and ScreenTime tools for managing app usage.

The new features will be available this fall as a free software update. Please download the iClarified app or follow iClarified on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and RSS for more updates.