Apple Watch For Your Kids Rolled Out in India; Allows Parental Controls, School-Time Notification Restrictions

Apple Watch For Your Kids – the family setup experience for children – is now available to users in India. It enables adults to set up cellular Apple Watch models for their children, allowing them to make calls and send messages even if they don't have an iPhone. Notably, the Cupertino-based technology conglomerate is also marketing its ‘Apple Watch For Your Kids' feature via a new page on its website, while the ability to set up an Apple Watch without a connected iPhone was launched a few years ago.

Apple Watch For Your Kids: How it Works

According to Apple, the For Your Kids functionality on the Apple Watch allows kids to connect with family and friends, if they have the cellular variant of Apple's smartwatch. They can take advantage of the communication, health, fitness, and safety features of the smartwatch with some safeguards. For calling, parents can pre-approve the contacts that will be accessible to kids on the Apple Watch.

Apple Watch For Your Kids also brings safety features such as Emergency SOS, Apple Maps to navigate their way home, and Find People for locating family members or sharing their current location with them.

Children can also track fitness activities via Activity rings and create goals for different workouts. They can challenge their friends by sending them Activity Sharing invitations. The parent or guardian can monitor all of the aforementioned activities from their iPhone.

In addition to these features, it brings a dedicated Schooltime mode which appears as a distinctive yellow circle on the Apple Watch face for easy recognition. When enabled, it blocks notifications, restricts apps and turns on Do Not Disturb. As per Apple, this mode can be manually toggled, while parents can also schedule it via their iPhone.

Apple Watch For Your Kids System Requirements

Apple says this feature is available to users with an Apple Watch Series 4 or later or Apple Watch SE, paired with iPhone 8 or later running the latest watchOS and iOS. To activate cellular service, a wireless service plan for Apple Watch is required.

Additionally, users will require an Apple ID for themselves and one for the family member they wish to set it up for, with two-factor authentication enabled on both accounts.

With the Apple Watch For Your Kids feature, the smartwatch can deliver up to 14 hours of battery life on a single charge, depending on the model, according to Apple.