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Two things: your phone and your child’s device (iPhone or iPad). Install ChoreKey on both. One plan covers your whole family, so your child’s device costs nothing extra when it is in your Family Sharing group. On your phone choose My device; on theirs choose My child’s device and scan the QR code from your phone.
Once, during setup. Apple requires the parental controls to be granted on the device itself, and that step belongs in your hands, not your child’s. While you’re holding it you’ll pick the apps that lock, set your parent PIN, and hand it back. After that, everything, assigning chores, reviewing photos, unlocking, happens from your phone.
Apple’s Screen Time permission asks for that device’s own passcode, on your child’s iPad, that’s the passcode your child uses (or their Touch ID/Face ID). Tip: you can add your own fingerprint to their device first (Settings → Touch ID & Passcode) so future prompts are one touch for you.
That’s intentional: once you’re paired with the parent app, your family’s chores also live in your own private iCloud, so deleting or reinstalling the app doesn’t lose them. Re-pair the device and everything is where you left it. You can delete any chore you no longer want from the dashboard.
The apps and categories you choose during setup, games, video, social, whatever you pick. Phone and FaceTime are never blocked, even when the shield is on, because iOS protects them. Calls home always work. Anything else, including Messages and Maps, is blocked only if you select it.
They do the chore, snap a photo, and submit. Your phone gets a notification, you check their work, and you approve right from your phone, their device unlocks within seconds. If they cut corners, send it back for a redo instead.
The approval waits for you, there’s no time pressure on your side. Your child can also hand the device to any parent at home, who can review and approve on the device itself with the parent PIN.
An approval is delivered within seconds when their device is online. If it was offline for more than 15 minutes after you approved, the unlock expires for safety, just approve again. A pull-down on their chore screen also forces a fresh check.
If you’ve set a home location, the lock lifts automatically when they leave and re-applies when they’re back. ChoreKey is about making home time productive, not punishing children at school or out with friends.
They can’t. While a device is paired and a parent PIN is set, ChoreKey turns on the same iOS protection Screen Time uses for “Don’t Allow Deleting Apps.” Heads up: this blocks deleting any app on that device, that’s how Apple’s switch works. It releases the moment you unpair (PIN → Settings → Unpair from parent).
No. The PIN is created by you during setup, while the device is in your hands. The app never offers PIN creation to a paired device afterward, and wrong-guess lockouts slow down brute-forcing.
Out of the box, yes. iOS lets whoever holds the device open Settings → Screen Time and switch off ChoreKey’s access, or switch off Screen Time entirely. Until you add a passcode, nothing guards that switch, and flipping it drops every lock at once. That’s Apple’s design for regular (non-child) Apple IDs, not a ChoreKey bug, and every Screen Time app has the same gap.
Close it with a Screen Time passcode (2 minutes, best done during setup):
With that passcode set, turning Screen Time off or removing ChoreKey’s access asks for the passcode first.
If it happens anyway: ChoreKey notices the revocation and shows a tamper screen on the child’s device, so it’s never silent. Once access is turned back on, ChoreKey re-applies the lock the next time it runs.
For the strongest setup, use a child Apple ID in your Family Sharing group. Apple then gates Screen Time changes behind your own parental approvals instead of a four-digit passcode.
On a device paired with the parent app: open iOS Settings → Screen Time → ChoreKey and turn off its access (this releases the app-deletion lock), then delete ChoreKey, restart the device, and reinstall. Your chores come back from iCloud when you re-pair, and you’ll set a fresh PIN during setup. On a standalone device, or one using ChoreKey without the parent app: just delete, restart, reinstall. We don’t store your PIN anywhere off-device, so a reset like this is the only recovery, that’s a feature, not a bug.
On iPhone, ChoreKey starts with a 7-day free trial. After that it is $4.99 a month, $29.99 a year, or $39.99 once for lifetime. One plan includes everything, including approving from your own phone. Family Sharing works on all three plans, so a child in your Family Sharing group is covered by your plan. Billing is through Apple, and you can cancel any time in iPhone Settings. If the trial or plan ends, ChoreKey stops locking apps on your child’s phone. Nothing is deleted, and paying again starts it back up. If you bought ChoreKey+ before, you keep lifetime access at no charge. On Android, ChoreKey is free, and a parent approves chores directly on the child’s device with the parent PIN. Approving from your own phone is not available on Android yet.
Without the parent app, everything lives only on your child’s device (iPhone or Android), and photos there are cleaned up seven days after a chore is approved or returned. We run no servers and collect no analytics. With the parent app, chore data and photos also live in your own private iCloud (Apple’s CloudKit), shared only between your family’s devices, and those photos stay there until you delete them. From version 1.3.2, photos never leave your family’s devices and iCloud and are never sent to us. Versions 1.3.0 and 1.3.1 had an optional AI photo check that sent a photo to a server and to Anthropic. The service behind it is shut off once 1.3.2 is available. Details in the privacy policy.
Yes, pair as many devices as you have children (or add multiple children on one shared device). Each child gets their own list and status on your dashboard.