How ScreenVow works
A step-by-step walkthrough of the whole process, from setting up restrictions on your phone to getting your passcode back later.
1. Set up your Screen Time restrictions
Before you touch ScreenVow, open Settings → Screen Time on your iPhone and turn on the Content & Privacy Restrictions you want — app limits, content filters, whatever you're committing to. This part is entirely between you and Apple; ScreenVow never touches your phone directly.
2. Choose a commitment period
From your dashboard, pick how long you want your Screen Time passcode locked away: 30, 180, or 365 days. Pick a period you can actually live with — you won't be able to casually change it once it starts.
3. Subscribe
Your subscription covers access to your ScreenVow account and dashboard. It's billed separately from your commitment — cancelling it later never ends or reveals an active commitment early.
4. Let ScreenVow generate your passcode
ScreenVow generates a random Screen Time passcode for you using a secure generator — never something guessable, and never chosen by you (so you can't just remember it on purpose). It's encrypted the moment it's created.
5. Enter it into your iPhone, guided digit by digit
We walk you through entering the passcode into Apple's Screen Time setup one digit at a time. Some digits are shown to you directly, and some are shown briefly and then deliberately hidden again, so you finish the process without having a clear, memorized picture of the full code.
6. Skip Passcode Recovery
Near the end, Apple offers to let you link Screen Time recovery to your Apple ID. We ask you to decline (skip) this — linking it would give you an easy way to reset the passcode yourself later, which defeats the point of the commitment.
7. Confirm your commitment
Once setup is finished, confirm on your dashboard. Your commitment timer starts, and your dashboard will show it as locked until your chosen period ends.
8. When your commitment period ends
You can request to reveal your passcode. There's a one-hour wait after you request it before it's actually shown — that's intentional, to give you a little time to reconsider. If you've decided you don't want the passcode back at all, you can permanently delete it instead and reconfigure Screen Time yourself from scratch.
Have a question this didn't answer?
support@screenvow.com