Screen Time

Apple’s built-in Screen Time controls work out of the box with Squiggle. If you’ve set a daily app limit, downtime hours, or content restrictions, Squiggle respects them — when the time runs out, iOS shows the standard “time’s up” screen and Squiggle quietly bows out.

If you use Family Sharing to manage your child’s iPad from your phone, Squiggle is fully compatible with that flow. Approvals and extensions go through the normal Apple process — we don’t override or work around it.

You can also set a soft daily limit inside Squiggle’s parent area. When the time is almost up:

• Squiggle wraps things up gently — never mid-stroke and never mid-letter.
• The current drawing or scene auto-saves before the session ends.
• A friendly “see you tomorrow” screen appears, with the day’s favourite drawing as the send-off.

The default is “no in-app limit” — we trust you to set what works for your family. Common choices we’ve seen: 15 minutes per session, 30 minutes per day, or weekends-only.

If you need a hard limit — not a friendly “see you tomorrow” but an outright stop — iPadOS has Guided Access built in. Triple-click the side button before handing over the iPad, set a session timer, and when it runs out the iPad needs your passcode to do anything else.

It’s what most of us on the Squiggle team use with our own kids: ten minutes for a three-year-old, twenty for a five-year-old, and the timer is non-negotiable. Apple has a clear walkthrough here: Use Guided Access on iPad.

Guided Access also locks the iPad to a single app, so your child can’t accidentally exit Squiggle — handy for handing the iPad off at a restaurant or in the car.

A lot of kids’ apps optimise for time-on-app. Squiggle does the opposite — we make it easy to put the iPad down at any moment:

• No autoplay animations or videos that pull attention forward.
• No leaderboards, points, daily streaks, or “come back tomorrow” mechanics.
• No push notifications. Squiggle never pings the iPad when it’s closed.
• Each screen answers one question. There is no infinite scroll.
• The child sets the pace. Squiggle waits.

A four-year-old can spend fifteen quiet minutes drawing a careful cat. Our job is to make those fifteen minutes feel rewarding — without making them want a sixteenth, seventeenth, or twentieth.

We’re parents too. A handful of things that have worked in our own households:

• Use Squiggle when you can be in the same room — even if you’re not actively watching, your presence matters.
• Pair it with paper crayons. Let them draw the same word in both, then compare.
• Print finished scenes as cards and put them on the fridge. Physical pride beats digital pride.
• Let them quit when they want to, not just when the timer beeps. Squiggle is a low-stakes activity by design.
• Don’t use Squiggle as a bedtime-story substitute. Books with a trusted adult are still the gold standard.

Squiggle helps with early drawing, spelling, and letter formation. It is a tool, not a curriculum, and certainly not a substitute for a trusted adult.

Kids learn language fastest through conversation with people who love them. They learn drawing by watching how someone older holds a crayon. Squiggle is one quiet helper among many — useful in the right dose, never the whole meal.

Any questions about how screen time works in Squiggle, write to hi@squigglepad.com.