Parents
Block Safari on a Child's iPhone or iPad
Disable Safari on a child's iPhone or iPad using one of these effective parental control techniques.
One of the most common questions we see from parents is how they can prevent a child from using Safari. Some parents want to ensure that a child only uses Safari when they can be supervised while others want to create a dumbed-down iPhone that is completely safe for kids. If you are trying to prevent your child from using Safari, you'll need to choose a restriction approach depending on your overall goal. In this guide, we'll explore a few effective ways to block Safari on a child's iPhone or iPad.
Disable the Safari app permanently on a child's iPhone or iPad using Screen Time
If you want to completely restrict the use of Safari so that your child never accesses the app, you can remove Safari from the list of allowed apps in screen time. If you are using Apple Family, you can configure these Screen Time settings from your own iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Otherwise, you'll need to use your child's device to do the following:
Parents should then properly lock the Screen Time settings so that a parent's pin is required to re-enable Safari later. For full instructions, check our dedicated guide for parents on iPhone .
Consider screen monitoring to ensure that Safari use is supervised
If you want to help your child develop healthy habits while still having the power to intervene, a more reliable alternative to disabling the Safari app on a child's device is to record activity across your child's entire iPhone using a screen monitoring app like LivingRoom for Families .
As your child uses their iPhone or iPad, they will see a recording indicator overlaying the top corner of the screen, reminding them to use Safari responsibly:
You'll be able to view screenshots of what websites your child visits in Safari in the LivingRoom for Families parent dashboard.
Only allow a few websites to be opened in Safari
Instead of blocking safari from a child completely, you can keep the app enabled, but limit the list of websites that can be opened in Safari. This is a very restrictive way to use Safari since it will block websites from being visited in Safari other than the ones you add to the allowlist.
Here, parents can choose a limited set of websites that their child can access.
Parents can also remotely control these restrictions using Apple Family as opposed to needing to borrow their child's iPhone each time. See our dedicated parents' guide for iPhone to learn more.
Disable Safari on a child's device periodically
Instead of blocking a child from using Safari completely, you can block Safari on a schedule so that you limit the time when it can be sued. To do this, parents need to use Screen Time's downtime feature. On your child's iPhone: