Screen Time permission is stuck or revoked

Why the apps open when Screen Time goes off

The app shield is not a Fold'em invention. It is Apple's own Screen Time, driven through Family Controls, and the list of apps you sealed lives in a Screen Time store that only holds while you have granted Fold'em that permission. Turn the permission off in iOS Settings and iOS empties the authority the shield was standing on, so the sealed apps open on the next tap.

The app reads that permission on the phone itself, with no round trip to a server, which is why the fault appears the moment you come back to Fold'em rather than at some later sync. The web shield is a different layer and is untouched by this: it is a DNS setting iOS holds separately, so betting sites can still be blocked while the apps are open.

What the app says while it is off

Three surfaces change and they agree with each other. The Shield tab's apps tile drops its count and reads Down over Screen Time not approved, because a number there would claim protection the phone does not have. Home's safe reads Needs attention and raises a card that names the one thing to put back. Your keyholder's Wallet pass turns to Protection off, and that turn comes from the phone's own report: the heartbeat carries the authorization status, and the server treats a phone that is not authorized as revoked before it looks at anything else, so nothing lower down can talk it out of the alarm.

What happens to your days

Earned progress pauses. The day count, the money kept and the milestones freeze where they were and start again from there when the permission comes back. Nothing is credited for the gap, and nothing already earned is taken away. The countdown to your term's end is the exception and keeps running on the real clock, because that deadline is fixed on the server and is not a thing the phone earns.

If iOS will not ask you at all

Two answers from iOS look the same from the outside and are not. If you already answered Don't Allow, iOS refuses to present the dialog again and the only route left is Settings, which the step says as soon as it is true. If this iPhone has no device passcode at all, iOS will not hand Screen Time to any app: set a passcode in Settings first, then come back and grant it. Fold'em is told which refusal it got and says so; it is never told anything else about why, and it never asks for a Screen Time passcode itself.

What this does not do

Granting the permission again does not give you back the days that passed while it was off, and it does not remove the record that protection was off: your keyholder was told when it happened and that stands. It does not end your term, cancel an exit request, or change a wait that is already counting. It does not touch the web shield, the deletion lock or the Games category, each of which iOS holds separately. And nothing here is a way out: turning Screen Time off unblocks the apps on this phone and tells the one person you asked to hold you to it, which is the whole of what it does.