Did you know safari keeps this away from you.

As a busy mother of two energetic children, it wasn't until recently that I began to question my oldest son's habit of unlimited youtube time and I became vigilant about monitoring his internet use.

Initially, he would sneak onto his iPad, computer, and television for unlimited streaming of youtube videos. After I learned he can snooze the downtime limit I set for him on his device through Apple’s Parental Controls built into its phones. Youtube has good parental controls , like I can set the watch time . If kids have learned self control they can stop or else they can log out and log in to set the watch timer to zero.I decided to delete the youtube itself knowing he will go to browsers.

So I was busy that day and did not check when he started , I was sort of relying on my defense mechanism which looked like this. I have already deleted the app from his iPad and he is only allowed to watch on television, sitting upright with lights on. So what can he do ? As expected He managed to watch through web browsers.

I did not know safari does not keep time stamps on history until recently that day, when I had to figure out when exactly my son started watching youtube as we have a two hours rule in place. And that day it was way more than that. And as a budding tech buff, my just turned tween son tries multiple ways to mess with his screen timelines when I am very busy and I am unable to keep a tab on his screen time.

I searched , i could see the list of all itmes in history But to my surprise I could not find any specific information on time . With no options left I had to let my tween son get away that day with his internet- limit -cross -crime as I had no proof.

I was mad at safari and youtube as they do not show the history with a time stamp. Unlike some other browsers, Safari does not show how long ago sites were visited or what time they were accessed; instead, it arranges them by group likes afternoon, evening etc. I screamed Why not ? Chrome does so do edge and firefox !

More and less motivated than ever before- my need for control having been tested by a browser and an app -I felt compelled to make the change so we're both satisfied...and also so I'm not wearing myself out checking internet histories after every school break.

I decided to run through Quora to figure it out.Enlightened I know now that safari does store the data it just decides not to show it. Digging the data from metadata , converting the db files to text files to retreive the information is not a job on a regular day for busy moms like me it is for some other day.So I yelled more at safari and decided to delete it from his ipad and keep google chrome as the only browser .Apparently I couldnt do that either . If I have to , I can only toggle the safari on and off from the settings but not delete it.

I also tried the famous all robust Spotlight Search. It is great iphone feature but did not serve my purpose which was to find out the timestamp of history on ipad.Spotlight search is one place to search all, iphone or web or apps or your messages or emails in one instant .

As someone who grew up in the days before YouTube as compared to these kids who are offered everything anytime (now followed by temptation), it only seems fair to impose limits where I can.