+1 lots of complaints

to the best of my knowledge, the reliability has greatly improved with iOS 27, but I don't think it's quite perfect yet? low samples, but the 30% figure likely is more like ~9% on 27.0 and 3% on 27.0.1 (and higher)

UPDATE: feedback was updated that potential fixes are in "iOS 27 beta 8 (Build: 24A5430a)" will have to test and observe how the feature works as iOS 27 rolls out

great news! in latest public iOS 27 beta there now is a "Enter Screen Time Passcode" prompt; thank you Apple!!

Update on public beta of iOS 26.6 (Beta 3): It seems like toggle is there, but pressing on it now does nothing. Maybe this problem is fixed? Difficult to tell how intentional it is though. ~3 weeks ago I reported noticing this behavior but after multiple tries it would toggle OFF. Now this doesn't seem to be happening. Just stays off.

iOS 27 Beta 2: still not working correctly - should be an easy fix!

This is still happening on iOS 26.6 (beta) What’s unique is that at first it seems like you can’t toggle it. As if there was some work done to disable the ability to toggle. But if you keep trying (ex. Press 5 times), it eventually gives up and Face ID scan happens and the apps screen time settings toggle turns off even though there’s a passcode set. Again; super easy solution is to just not show it in two places (the apps settings).

+1 a lot of developers report instability around Screen Time API's and this can fix a lot of headache for both Apple and devs

+1 AFAIK the ability to put "Apps With Screen Time Access" behind a Screen Time Passcode is a new thing since iOS 26.4 (?). I'm currently on iOS 26.5 Beta 2 and this particular part works fine (it presents Screen Time passcode when trying to disable an apps Screen Time access). However, the introduction of this introduced a similar bug where if you access the apps settings (not Screen Time settings), you can circumvent the Screen Time Passcode by using the "Screen Time Restrictions" toggle. FB22463959 is feedback number. The feedback for Apple is actually relatively simple (politics aside): just don't show the "Screen Time Restrictions" toggle in apps settings. This is how it actually was before. This is just a typical engineering/product issue where introducing new features introduces more bugs. Keeping it simple == less bugs (now and in the future).

How are people doing on iOS 26.5? So far so good, but this happened with the first 26.4 release too: it seemed to be fixed, but then (maybe) something got reverted.

unfortunately, iOS 26.4 (final version) also has the bug that's iOS 26.2, iOS 26.3 and iOS 26.4 (3-4 months) of limits automatically activating most mornings without reaching the limit, and this also affects the default Apple Screen Time

Unfortunately, just got the latest 26.4 beta 3(?) that released yesterday and am again getting the problem. iOS 26.4 (23E5223f)

Yes, same here. iOS 26.4 looking stable so far. Thank you for the fixes Apple devs 🙏

iOS 26.3 RC does not seem to fix the problem

iOS 26.3 beta 3 might have a new (arguably worse?) behavior where instead of all limits blocking instantly on DEVICE pickup, each limit blocks instantly separately only when you open the app so if you have two separate limits (YouTube and Instagram), YouTube will block when its opened for the first time while leaving Instagram unaffected, until you open Instagram for the first time (where then that will also instantly block)