Block a Child's App that's already been downloaded

I have tried over several years to remove snapchat from my sons ipad. The failure of apple to address this serious limitation is the one reason that I will not allow, under any circumstances, my son to get any more apple products. He has a mini ipad and will never get a new one or an iphone until parents are able to keep safe their children. For such a large company so disallow parents the possibility to safeguard their children is abominable, and I look forward to the inevitable class action that will force them into taking responsibility for their negligence.

In the meantime, to keep my child safe I will stick to android.

If after this post a miracle happens and apple do take their responsibilities seriously, please do post the solution as until the ipad (hopefully soon) fails, we are stuck with an inferior product, and a vulnerable child remaining vulnerable.

FoxFifth, the problem that MACBOOKAIRUSER243 is experiencing is that they are using Screentime settings to require that a child receive permission to download an app and, once having granted permission to download the app, they cannot take that permission away.

For example, let's say that they had a phone for a kid and initially granted permission to install YouTube. If, after a while, they decided they no longer wanted their kid to have YouTube and deleted the app from the phone, the kid can just go back to the app store and download it again without the app store checking with the parent for permission again. There is no way to remove permission once it has been granted once.

The obvious solution is that when the "require permission" option is checked that a phone always be required to get permission to download any app. The clunkier, less obvious solution, would be to allow a parent to remove permission after it has been granted. As it is, granting permission once lasts forever.

The only work around I have found this far is to set the screen time limit on that app to 1 min, then they will have to request more time to continue using it. It’s not ideal but it seems to do the trick for now, unless you think they can get into trouble in 1 Min time. My son was grounded from YouTube and this is how in enforced it… also if he requested more time on it I knew he was trying to use it when he wasn’t supposed to.

To stop a previously downloaded app from being downloaded again, hide the purchase. See instructions in Hide purchases from the App Store - Apple Support

including the following:

When you hide an app in your purchase list, it no longer appears in the list of your purchases that's in the App Store. The app will still appear in your complete purchase history in Settings. And if you use Family Sharing, family members can't redownload the app from your list of shared purchases.

Apple Support Community is set up as an end-user to end-user technical issue support service (i.e., users like you helping other users). We are not Apple. Feedback for Apple will likely get more attention if you send it using: Product Feedback - Apple

Also needing this feature. Sometimes you have let the kids try an app but you realize it’s not appropriate or they can lose their privileges and the app needs to be able to be blocked.

While not a perfect solution, I’ve been able to severely restrict available apps my child can redownload by selecting apps 4+ under screen time/contents&privacy/apps. For some reason when I selected “don’t allow” all apps were available to redownload, but with the “4+” selection only basic general audience apps remain downloadable. Of course if you want to allow any apps with a higher age rating this won’t work, but it served its purpose for my situation.

Thank you for the clarification -- this is exactly what I am trying to accomplish, as well.

This doesn't work. Even if you hide the app from the purchase list, the child can still download it simply by searching for the app and clicking the Get button.

@CrystalNE84, thank you for this suggestion of using the screen time limit which is sensible workaround of the App store deficiences when it comes to parental controls for already downloaded apps.