Screen Time settings not syncing on macOS 27 and iOS 27

Apple provides instructions on changing Screen Time settings for yourself and your family members, I suggest that you read those instructions carefully.

Change Screen Time settings on Mac - Apple Support

This support article details what is new in macOS 27 with links to additional info:

What’s new with parental controls in Screen Time and Family Sharing - Apple Support

To you specific points, in macOS System Settings and iOS Settings you can access Screen Time via Family or Screen Time, both work. To select a family member, on your Mac go to System Settings > Screen Time and use the drop-down menu in the upper right corner. Likewise, the Share Across Devices is present on both. Note that that setting applies to your own screen time settings, for children in a family group that setting does not need to be on since those are 'imposed' on all the child's devices.

macOS 27.0.1

iOS 27.0.1

I see the same settings on my iPad Pro running 27.0.1, not going to bother with a screenshot of that.

I can manage screen time settings just fine for my two minor children (my college freshman is an adult and adults cannot have screen time managed via Family Sharing). Doesn't matter if I make changes to them on any of my three devices. I do not have screen time set up for myself, if I did then toggling Share Across Devices would make it apply on all of them.

If things are not working as expected (and as they are working for me), then here are some possible troubleshooting steps.

Flush Ghost Devices from Family Sharing

The new architecture requires every single active device in your Family Sharing group to be completely updated to use the new Screen Time database. If you have an old iPad in a drawer, an old Mac, or a "ghost" duplicate device tied to your child's or your own Apple ID, the syncing network will break silently. [

• On your iPhone, go to Settings > Family.
• Tap View Family Devices (or review each family member's device list).
• If you see any old, unused, or duplicate devices that cannot be updated, remove them from the account entirely.

Trigger the "Get Started" Reset

Even if all your main devices are updated, the backend sometimes fails to migrate your rules to the new syncing protocol. You can manually push this:

• Go to Settings > Family on your device.
• If you see a button that says Get Started under the parental controls section, tap it. This forces Apple's servers to re-index and map your current rules across the new architecture.
• How to verify it worked: Tap your child's name under Settings > Family and select Screen Time. If you see a "Pause Device" button, the new cloud infrastructure is active. If you don't, the devices are still stuck on the legacy syncing protocol.

Change the Child's Device Name

A possible bug in the iCloud Family cache may cause changes made on a Mac to conflict with changes made on an iPhone. Forcing a name change clears out stale tokens on Apple's sync servers.

• On your kid's iPhone, go to Settings > General > About > Name.
• Change the name slightly (e.g., from "Leo's iPhone" to "Leo iPhone").
• Restart their device, then restart your Mac and iPhone. This forces all three devices to handshake fresh connection data

Toggle the Sync State on the Child's Profile

If "Share Across Devices" is missing from your own menu, you have to ensure the child's profile itself isn't blocking the sync:

• Go to your child's device directly.
• Open Settings > Screen Time.
• Scroll down to see if a local sync or restriction toggle is blocking remote management, or temporarily Turn Off Screen Time directly on their device, restart it, and re-enable it strictly from your iPhone's Family menu

Any further on? I have exactly the same screen time views as you. No 'share across devices' toggle not even greyed out. I think that was removed in ios27. I also think, look at Nuroanatomist screen shots that Nuro is actually stuck using the old ios26 screen time layout even though they are on ios27.0.1 they may have some old devices that prevented the new architecture from rolling out fully across all their family devices.

Doesn’t help with our issue, that screen time isn't working for us though. I found a weird bug... see if you are the same....

On my daughters Macbook go to settings/family/child name/ screentime graph I only see my daughters iPhone data. This is reflected in my organisers screen time view. No device list showing top right of graph.

Then,

On my daughters MacBook go to settings/screentime/graph/device list/select Neo to view usage data. Then the organisers screen time view will show a drop down device list and show MacBook and iPhone data! But its never live data from the MacBook. I must view it on her MacBook to get a 'snapshot' of data used on the organisers family/screen time view. Apps aren't reported unless I look at her screen time data.

So my daughters MacBook is set up as a standard user, she is child Apple ID and depending on which view she looks at on her MacBook my organisers view of data is altered to include all her devices or just show her iPhone! She can also just access Find My and turn it off which shuts off all her devices (her iPhone and iPad show the menu greyed out so settings are locked). None of the data adds up properly either.

All devices on ios27.2

My sons MacBook, also a Neo, does exactly the same with a teen account.

I've got Apple engineers looking at the screen recordings and data collection to figure out whats happening.

The rollout out of this new parental control has been highly frustrating. We removed all devices with less than ios27 on. retiring off an iPad mini6, MacBook Air 2018, watch 5, watch 7. Buying two Neos. Apple engineers eventually got the new parental control architecture up, running and stable. It ran for 3 weeks without a noticeable issue. I contacted Apple and ask could we add our old watches back to the organisers iPhone and parent iPhone. As people seem to say online they had done this with no issue. Asked apple support bot, then first line and then a senior agent, all said yes, this should be no problem, should not cause an issue. So I added the watches back. All seemed fine until 2 days later the parental control wheels fell off! one kids phone had reverted back to ios26 screen time, the other flicked between the two whilst you were watching. The links between parental control and kids devices was lost. Over the coming days the issue spread across the whole family list of devices. Unpaired the watches, bought two new watches for us - Ultra 4 and SE. Set up screen time again. Plagued with problems again. Resulting in factory reset of my sons iPhone as it would not let you sign out even though all parental control had been removed and he had been removed from the family! All local settings were off. Apple said try reset all settings, if that fails, which it did. Full factory reset. Doing this got my sons iPhone back into the family group and it responded to amendments to parental controls in real time.

So now its just the two Neo's that have this odd behaviour and none reporting of usage.

Hope the engineers can fix it again like last time.

What a mess!

I do not know why you are not seeing the normal options that I see, and that are described in Apple's documentation. I suspect that your Family Sharing may not be set up correctly, per Apple's instructions,

Set up Family Sharing on Mac - Apple Support

When I go to System Settings > Family and select a child, under Screen Time there is a button to open it and that takes me to the Screen Time settings pane.

I suppose there may be a little bug there, in that I would think clicking that button would result in that child's settings being pre-selected in the Screen Time pane (the button says "Open 'My Child's' Screen Time..."), but instead my own settings are selected in the drop-down menu and I need to select that child again.

The above are from macOS 27.0.1.

If there's an Apple Store near you, you may want to get some help there.

Genius Bar Reservation and Apple Support Options - Apple

Sorry but those are the screens I had with macOS and iOS 26, not 27

Here are my screens with macOS 27 and iOS 27.

No dropdown menus, no shared across platform options.

macOS 27 doesn't have a dropdown to select the member. It shows the members at the bottom and then forces you to go to Family (leaving screentime)...

And I already spent way too much time resetting, logging out, logging back in, etc...

macOS 27.0.1

iOS 27.0.1

That means on depending Screentime-mood-of-the-day I have to manage either on the mac, or on the iPhone another time with my kid sometimes never being updated.

I'm going to try again with Apple instructions. But I'll wait for 27.2 that is supposedly coming very soon. It may fix the bug.

And if this still doesn't work, yes, I'll go to an Apple Store nearby.

And I'm a software and system engineer! So I can't imagine users that are not tech savvy... 😂

Wow,

Thanks for going the extra mile for all of us and reporting the results.

I was about to do exactly everything you did here. So I'll probably skip the effort now.

What I'm going to make sure first is that everyone is on the same OS versions on each device.

My daughter’s watch was behaving stupidly not allowing her to set alarms! They were grayed out when this should always be allowed. Upgrading both her iPhone and watch to 27.2 at least fixed this.

Now my wife is still on 26 something on her Mac and partly 27 on iPhones and iPads.

Once everything is straightened I'll guess and try again, if results are fine, I'll share them here.