Power To The Parents

You set the rules in SimpleSentinel on your phone. Your child's iPhone or iPad pairs with a one-time code and grants Apple's Screen Time permission once. No computer, no wire, no reset, no VPN.

Yes. A parent sets it up from their own iPhone with no computer and no cable. The app walks through each child's phone step by step, and then reads every rule back from the child's phone so the parent can see what is actually enforced.

No, and neither can any app on iOS. What SimpleSentinel does instead is give you a message channel that reaches your child during downtime, a No Ignore message they must acknowledge, and an emergency alert that sounds through silent. We never see what your child types anywhere.

No other app puts all of this in one place: every feature in the Highlighted Features section above, for every family, on one screen. It closes back doors most parents never knew existed, like a child changing the clock to end downtime early, or Siri answering a web search the filter would have blocked. And setup is simple: no guesswork, no computer, no cable, no reset, no VPN, and nothing on the phone is lost, not a photo, not a game. Pair your child's phone with a one-time code and the first child is done in a few minutes.

No. Setup is done on the two phones: yours and your child's. No cable, no computer, no reset, no VPN. A few minutes for the first child.

No. Screen Time, Ask to Buy, Find My and content ratings keep working exactly as before. SimpleSentinel runs alongside them on Apple's own Screen Time framework and adds what they don't offer: multiple downtime windows, a locked clock, chores that lock the phone, messages they can't ignore, and rules that report back.

With Apple's child authorization during the setup process, SimpleSentinel can't be deleted by your child, and it survives restarts and updates. The clock is locked, so downtime can't be dodged by changing the time. If Screen Time authorization is switched off on the phone, the next check-in reports it and your Home tab names it. A full factory erase does remove it, but it can't happen quietly: your child is left with an empty device that needs you to set it up again, and the app shows it has stopped checking in. Erasing doesn't defeat SimpleSentinel; it announces itself.

Yes. Apple doesn't allow any app to block the Phone app, so calls always work. During downtime every other app is closed, including Apple's own Messages and FaceTime, unless a parent or guardian always-allows an exception in a child's settings. SimpleSentinel has its own messaging, and parents and guardians can always text the child through an active downtime window; you choose which siblings and sitters have that privilege as well. Anyone else's message waits and lands the minute downtime ends, and the sender is told. Skipping downtime or granting more time is always one tap for a parent or guardian.

SimpleSentinel allows a parent to send a "No Ignore message," which covers the child's screen until the child acknowledges it. An "Emergency" message can also be sent, and it sounds its own alarm through downtime, a pause and quiet time. A child can send an emergency alert to a parent or guardian as well, which also breaks through silent mode; a parent can turn that off per child.

Yes, on the child's phone and on parents' phones: it uses Apple's Critical Alerts, which sound through Silent mode and every Focus. A sitter's phone rings normally, since a web page cannot break through silent on any phone. That web page is what lets a sitter use SimpleSentinel without an Apple device.

Whatever you allow: answer requests, pause a phone, send messages, add a chore for today. Everything a sitter allows ends at 11:59 PM. Anything permanent, like deleting an app or adding a contact, is always yours alone. You also choose whether a sitter may send No Ignore or Emergency messages. A sitter can manage several families, each with its own web page to keep things separate.

Yes. A sitter gets a personal web page that works in any browser on any phone, with the children's requests, the pause controls, messaging and alerts, only while the family has them active. No Apple device, no app and no account are needed, and the family chooses what the sitter may do.

No. Nothing is erased, backed up or restored. Your child's phone stays exactly as it is; SimpleSentinel adds rules to it, it doesn't rebuild it.

You, the parent, need an iPhone. Each child needs an iPhone or iPad running iOS 16 or later (iPhone 8 and newer, iPad 5th generation and newer), or you can hand them your own phone in Kid Mode with no child device at all. An Apple Watch needs no app of its own. It follows the rules of the iPhone it is paired with, so downtime, pauses and content limits reach the watch's apps too, and every message, chore and emergency you send shows on the wrist. Calls work on the watch during downtime, the same as on the phone. A child with only a cellular Apple Watch and no iPhone or iPad of their own has nothing for SimpleSentinel to connect to. Alarms that ring through silent need iOS 26 on the child's phone (iPhone 11 or later, iPad 8th generation or later). Sitters use any phone with a web browser, Android included. Android phones for children are not supported.

No. Apple's Find My does that, for free, on every device already. We keep your child's location off our servers entirely.

Our servers hold your family's rules, your child's requests, and the messages and summaries you've chosen to send, never the contents of the device. What your child types, watches or browses is never read, stored or sent to us, and we don't track location. Everything between your phones and our servers travels over an encrypted connection. A request is deleted the moment it's answered, nothing sits in a delivery relay longer than 72 hours, and when you delete your account, everything is deleted or de-identified within 90 days. We don't sell data and we don't run ads. We can't lose what we never hold.

One price covers your whole family: every child, every device, no per-child charges, ever. $16.99 a month or $149.99 a year. Founding families, the first 1,000, pay $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year and keep that price for as long as they stay subscribed. Every plan includes a 7-day free trial.

You get 7 days free with full access to everything, set up through the App Store. Setup takes minutes, so you'll see real value on day one. Your Apple Account isn't charged until the 7 days are up, and you can cancel anytime during the trial in your Apple Account settings and you won't be charged.

Your 7-day free trial lets you try everything before you're ever charged, so you'll know early if SimpleSentinel is right for you. After that, because SimpleSentinel is sold through the App Store, any refund is handled by Apple under Apple's policies. You can request one at reportaproblem.apple.com or in your Apple Account settings, and the decision rests with Apple. A refund never locks the device; you can return it to normal use anytime, refund or not.

We never trap a family, and we never yank protection out from under a child. You cancel anytime in your Apple Account subscription settings, and your service runs through the period you've already paid for. If a renewal payment fails, Apple keeps your service active while it retries your payment method, and only if it can't recover does the subscription end. Even then, your child's rules stay in place rather than suddenly opening up, until you remove the device in the parent app.

Apple's account-based controls wind down with age: purchase approvals end at 18, and an adult child can leave Family Sharing. SimpleSentinel's rules are yours, not a birthday's, so they never silently expire. That's by design, and it's why loosening them is easy: relax the rules stage by stage as your child matures, and when they're ready, remove their device in the app and it returns to normal on the next sync. The goal was never control forever. It's a child who no longer needs it.