Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Family sharing screen time bug: a fix for ghost apps

I'm happy to say I actually fixed a bug in the buggiest apple product ever - family sharing screen time.

The "always allowed" app list showed "ghost apps" -- left over apps from old versions of iOS like Find Friend. They appeared with a generic icon.

Removing my son from the family then adding him back in removed the ghost apps.

One bug down, dozens remain.

Update: Nope, the fix was transitory. Ghost apps back again. Screen Time is such a cluster.

Update: Ok, this might be the real fix. His Apple ID had 3 associated devices -- and iPad, and iPhone and a macOS user account on an old machine running maybe Sierra.  I removed the obsolete macOS relationship from his Apple ID on the web site, but it had to be remove again on his iPad.