This Buried Apple Feature Turns an iPhone Into the Perfect Kids’ Dumb Phone

I have been looking at classic dumb phones for months. Not out of nostalgia—though the first phone I bought with my own money was the Nokia 8210, and I still think about it (launched in October 1999 at Paris Fashion Week, it was then the world's smallest and lightest mobile). But the day I've been dreading has come: It's finally time for my son to get his first phone.

Come September, he will have to walk across town to school on his own. But if he's going to be walking around out in the world without me, then a tracking tag won't cut it. He is far too young to have unfettered access to the internet and social media platforms, but what if he gets lost? A classic Nokia, supplying just texts and calls, won't come to his aid. Maps and satnav require a web connection.

In short, he needs a smartphone that's not a smartphone. As a family deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem, we first looked to set draconian restrictions on my child's Apple account. But, amazingly, it immediately became obvious that it is impossible to block the use of Safari on iOS. Yes, you can restrict access to the app, but children have quickly found workarounds for such measures, such as asking friends to message them links, which can bypass restrictions when opened.

There are third-party apps such as Dumb Phone for iPhones and the Minimalist Phone app for Android users, but what irks me about these is that they charge you for the privilege of removing access to applications from your phone. Not adding—removing. My head can't fathom the logic of paying for things to be taken away from a phone.

Surely there must be a way to set up an iPhone as the perfect dumb phone for children—one with access to only the apps you deem appropriate, no internet browser, but with all-important tracking and navigation abilities—without having to pay another company to make it work? Well, there is. It's been hiding in the iOS Accessibility menu the whole time. And, inexplicably, it's a feature Apple barely talks about.

It's called Assistive Access. Introduced with iOS 17, Apple designed it for those with cognitive disabilities. If you've never encountered or stumbled across it, it's a distinctive iOS experience: fewer options, more focused features, easier to navigate. The aesthetic is ideal for kids: large, friendly tiles for the apps replace the smaller icons of the “normal” Apple interface.

Here's how you set it up: Head into Settings, tap Accessibility, scroll down to the General section at the very bottom, and tap Assistive Access. Now, tap Set Up Assistive Access, then Continue. It will then ask you to select your preferred appearance: rows or a grid. I suggest choosing a grid. This is how you get those super-large tiles. Now the OS will ask you to select allowed apps—tap the green plus icon next to the apps you want to allow.

Crucially, this is where, unlike with Apple’s standard child screen-time restrictions, you can choose to completely block internet browsing by simply not allowing Safari, Chrome, or any other similar app. And, unlike with those screen-time restrictions, if someone texts your child a link, it won't work. Why? Assistive Access is designed to prevent accidental navigation, so the system restricts unexpected web browsing.

Even though Assistive Access on Apple devices allows internet access, it is heavily restricted by design, and it's turned off by default. In this mode, the phone treats any link in a message as plain text, preventing the user from accidentally leaving the simplified interface.

Made for caregivers or trusted supporters, the user must specifically add internet-enabled apps like Messages, Safari, or third-party web apps to the Assistive Access interface. And once you add, say, Messages or Calls, you then choose whether your child can contact or be contacted by everyone, their contacts only, or just selected favorites.

You can even choose to have the keypad or speaker be available in Calls. Want the time displayed on the lock screen? Check that box. Make the mute switch inoperable? Tick. Decide how notifications appear? That too. The Music app only accesses playlists you preapprove. It's all, well, child's play to put together.

Once you're happy with your kid-appropriate apps, you set a unique four-digit Assistive Access passcode. This lets you turn the simplified OS on and off. To leave Assistive Access, triple-click the side button on Face ID devices or the Home button on iPhones with Touch ID, and it'll bring up the passcode prompt that lets the device switch back to the normal iPhone interface.

My chosen setup? My son only gets Calls, Messages, Maps, Camera (so we can video call, but I've ruthlessly turned off selfies), Photos, and Music. Nothing else. I’ve turned an old, unused iPhone 13 languishing in a drawer into the best six-app dumb phone money hasn’t bought. Not a bad thing at a time when Apple’s prices are skyrocketing.

What's more, this can now grow with him. Right now, I'm toying with adding Wallet so he can pay for things with his Acorns Early account. If I want to add Safari or Spotify or a game or two in the future, a delve back into the Assistive app settings lets me do so with one press. And I'm secure in the knowledge that there is absolutely no workaround here. In this mode, my child is incapable of doing anything that requires navigating standard iOS Settings or system user interface layers. Unless he gets my Assistive Access passcode, what I deem off-limits remains off-limits.

It's nearly all upside and no downside. A customizable, completely safe dumb phone with no monthly fee but with the added benefit of FaceTime, navigation, and Find My tracking, made from a device I had lying in a drawer that slots straight into our family's Apple ecosystem.

When I first set the phone up, I was worried I was missing something, that this solution could not be as good as it appeared. So I took the iPhone into an Apple Store and showed it to a support staffer. “What have you done?” he said, looking incredulously at my son's iPhone with its six dumb tiles. “This is a much better solution than Screen Time. I'm going to have to tell my colleagues about this.” I told him it was Assistive Access. “We don't get trained on that,” he admitted. “But this is great.”

Yes, it's odd that Apple doesn't train all its store staff on this laudable feature, but it's baffling that it doesn't shout about how good Assistive Access is for making a kid's dumb phone. I asked Apple directly why it doesn't market this buried feature in this way. Has it ever considered making a version of Assistive Access for children, a kids' OS, in effect? While Apple helped me with all my technical queries for this piece, it declined to answer these questions.

It's more than a little interesting that the coming revamped Screen Time dropping in iOS 27 this September adopts some of the key benefits of Assistive Access, in particular the ability, for the first time, to remove access to Safari when setting up a child's profile.

So, what's the downside? Well, Assistive Access runs sluggish, but my kid was so excited to get a phone, he didn't care one bit. More importantly, it does not recognize Screen Time limits and will completely override them, so keep this in mind when you add things like Safari or WhatsApp. We'll want to compare the use of Assistive Access for a child's phone with the new Screen Time redesign when it arrives. You also cannot turn off an iPhone in Assistive Access mode; you have to revert it to normal iOS to do this.

Perhaps more worryingly, on one occasion, my son managed to freeze the Messages app in Assistive Access mode by trying to search through loads of emojis. I was even able to repeat this freezing when he showed me what he did. The only way to unfreeze Messages was to take it out of Assistive Access mode, then put it back in—something he cannot do on his own. He was able to use the other five apps just fine when Messages fell