A toddler with the family iPad finds three things within a minute: the App Store, the button that buys more gems, and your email. None of this needs a separate device or a child account to fix. A few settings, done once, turn the iPad into something a two- to five-year-old can use without you hovering.
The steps below are for a shared family iPad on a recent version of iPadOS. Menu names have moved around between versions, so where they differ the older name is given too.
1. Turn on Screen Time and give it its own passcode
Open Settings → Screen Time and turn it on. Then set a Screen Time passcode that is not the iPad’s unlock code — the whole point is that a child who has watched you unlock the iPad still cannot change these settings.
Everything below lives behind that passcode.
2. Block purchases
A child cannot buy something they cannot reach, but many apps for small children have a shop somewhere, and a tap is a tap.
In Settings → Screen Time, open Apps & Websites → App Store and set In-app Purchases to Blocked. On older versions the same switch is under Content & Privacy Restrictions → iTunes & App Store Purchases → In-app Purchases → Don’t Allow. While you are there, you can also stop apps being installed or deleted.
Apps in the App Store’s Kids category must already keep purchases behind a parental gate — a question a young child cannot answer — but blocking them in Settings covers every app, not just those.
3. Lock the iPad to one app with Guided Access
Guided Access keeps the iPad inside a single app: the Home Screen, notifications and other apps are out of reach until you end it. It is the most useful setting on this list for the youngest children.
- Go to Settings → Accessibility → Guided Access and turn it on. Set a passcode, or use Face ID or Touch ID.
- Open the app your child is going to use.
- Triple-click the top button (or the Home button on an iPad that has one).
- Optionally circle parts of the screen to switch them off — a settings icon, an ad banner — and under Options turn off the volume buttons or set a time limit.
- Tap Start.
To end it, triple-click again, enter the passcode and tap End. The time limit is worth using: when it runs out the app stops, and the iPad, not you, is the one saying it is time.
4. Give your child a Home Screen page of their own
If your child uses the iPad without Guided Access, make one Home Screen page theirs: only their apps, in big obvious places, and nothing else.
- Touch and hold an empty spot on the Home Screen until the icons jiggle.
- Drag their apps onto a page of their own. Move your apps off it.
- To hide your other pages from them, tap the row of dots above the Dock and untick the pages you do not want shown. They are hidden, not deleted.
Widgets belong here too. On iPad a widget can sit anywhere on a Home Screen page. Touch and hold an empty spot, tap Edit → Add Widget, find the app, pick a size and tap Add Widget. A widget that a child can use without opening anything — a picture, a game, a word to tap — is one fewer app to open, and one fewer place to wander off from.
5. Set a daily limit
Settings → Screen Time → App Limits sets a daily allowance per app or per category, and Downtime blocks everything except the apps you allow for set hours, such as bedtime. The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests no more than about an hour a day of screen media for children aged 2 to 5, ideally used together with a parent, and none in the hour before bed.
6. Check the apps themselves
Settings decide what your child can reach. The apps decide what reaches your child. Before installing something for a small child, look at three things on its App Store page:
- “Made for Ages 0–5” (or 6–8). That label means the app is in the Kids category, which requires a parental gate before any purchase or link out of the app, and rules out third-party advertising and analytics except in limited, reviewed cases.
- App Privacy. “Data Used to Track You” on a toddler app is worth pausing over.
- What it needs. An account, an internet connection, or reading. A pre-reader cannot get past a screen that says “Tap Continue”.
What I am building for this
VocabPeek Junior is an iPhone and iPad app I built to live on exactly the kind of child’s Home Screen page described above. Its widget — medium, large or, on iPad, extra large — says an English word and your child taps the right picture out of three, without opening the app. Settings and links sit behind a parent check, and up to four children can each have their own animal and progress on the one iPad.
It has no account, no ads and no in-app links a child can follow, and it plays without a connection. It is on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, free for now.
Short answers
How do I stop my toddler leaving an app on iPad? Use Guided Access: Settings → Accessibility → Guided Access, then triple-click the top button inside the app.
How do I stop in-app purchases on iPad? Settings → Screen Time → Apps & Websites → App Store → In-app Purchases → Blocked. Older versions put it under Content & Privacy Restrictions.
Does my toddler need their own Apple Account? Not for a shared family iPad. Screen Time with its own passcode covers a toddler; a child account through Family Sharing matters more once the child has a device of their own.
What is a parental gate? A small question or task, such as typing a number written out in words, that an adult can pass and a young child cannot. Kids category apps must put purchases and links behind one.