Can I block gambling apps on their iPhone

Who installs it, and where the permission lives

The blocking on an iPhone is done by Apple's Screen Time controls. An app asks for permission to use them, the person signed in to that phone grants it, and from then on the app can seal the apps that person picked. Every part of that happens on the one device. There is no remote grant, no administrator account and no way to hand the permission to somebody who is not holding the phone.

So the person who wants to be blocked installs it and picks what to seal. You cannot do that step for them, and any product that says otherwise is describing a company owned device or a parent managing a child's account, which is set out further down.

Nor is there a way to remove the permission afterwards. Screen Time can be switched off in Settings by whoever holds the phone, and no app on iOS can stop that. What Fold'em does about it is refuse to pretend: switching it off is not blocked, it is reported.

What you hold instead

One thing. If they ask to end the term early, the request reaches you and you answer it.

Keeping the lock is one tap, from anywhere, on the page your email links to, and your phone confirms it is you before the tap counts. Letting them out is only ever done face to face: there is no approve button on any page, in any email or on the pass, and an approval means they scan a code carried on your Wallet pass with the app on their phone while you stand together. Even then a wait of at least 72 hours starts from the moment you said yes.

You cannot start their term, change its length, shorten a wait or cancel one, and you cannot choose which updates reach you. That last one is deliberate: a keyholder who could mute their own alerts could hold a key and quietly stop hearing about it.

Exactly what you are told

Three events reach a keyholder by email, the same three for everybody, and neither you nor they can switch them off.

1. Protection went off. Screen Time permission was switched off on that phone, or the shield Fold'em applied is gone while a lock is still running. Your Wallet pass changes to Protection off, and the letter says what happened and when, and that it can be a hard moment or simply Screen Time being reset for another reason.
2. The phone stopped confirming. No reading of any kind has arrived for 24 hours. Your pass reads Not confirmed, and the letter is the gentler of the two: it says the device has not confirmed protection since a given time, and that most of the time this is a dead battery or airplane mode. It does not say anything was switched off.
3. The subscription lapsed. The letter carries the date protection would end if renewal stays off.

Beside those there is a request to leave early, the one thing you answer rather than simply read. Everything quieter rides the Wallet pass alone: a milestone day, an extended term, a busy stretch of blocked attempts, an all clear when a turned card recovers, and a change to which of their optional alerts are on.

The one thing that is not a letter

This is the paragraph other products do not write, and the reason to read the mechanism rather than the marketing.

Fold'em blocks betting sites with an encrypted DNS setting on the phone, separate from the Screen Time seal that holds the apps. That setting can be switched off in iOS Settings, and when it is, no email goes to the keyholder. Whether the state shows at all depends on how the phone was sealed: a phone whose apps are sealed reports nothing, and your pass keeps reading Protected; only a phone sealed with the web shield alone reports it, and its pass stops reading Protected. But there is no letter, so if you are relying on your inbox to tell you when protection weakens, your inbox will not tell you about that one.

Anybody selling you the sentence that a keyholder is always told when protection drops has not read the product. The three letters above are the complete list.

Reading the card

The Wallet pass carries one status word at a time, and the word is the fastest honest summary you have.

Protected means the last reading said the permission is granted and the shield is applied. Protection off and Not confirmed are the two above. There are quieter words for ordinary life too: a waiting state while the app picks are redone after a reinstall or an iOS update, a state for a phone sealed with the web shield alone whose own test of that shield did not come back blocked, and plain lifecycle words for a lapsed subscription or a finished term.

Two cautions. A calm word is not proof that the moment is calm, because the card updates through a push and a push is best effort, so a card can be behind; opening the pass makes it refresh. And no word on it describes a person. They describe one phone's protection, and gambling somewhere that phone cannot reach does not turn a card. The help page on Verified, Revoked and Dark is the fuller account.

What you are shown, and what is never sent

A keyholder is shown eleven things, and the full list lives in one place on this site rather than being retyped on every page that mentions it. Read it before you accept: what a keyholder can see, or the same list from the other side at what my keyholder sees.

The shape of it is status, counts, dates and event kinds. App and site names, browsing, amounts of money and anything typed are not merely hidden; no channel carries them to a partner at all, which is stronger than a promise not to display them.

What Family Sharing is, and is not, for

If the phone belongs to a child in your family, the answer is Apple's rather than ours. Apple's support pages state that Family Sharing lets a parent or guardian manage a child's device with Screen Time and parental controls, and that where it is legally required an Apple Account for a child under 18 has to be part of a Family Sharing group. Once the child's account is in the group you turn on Content and Privacy Restrictions, which governs the apps and content they can reach.

Family Sharing is not a route to an adult's phone. An adult in a family group manages their own Screen Time, and the group gives nobody else the ability to seal their apps. The page for parents covers both cases.