We hear stories every once in a while about folks who have received a whopping bill for “In-App Purchases” made from within iPhone apps and games. And those huge bills are almost always unexpected!

In a nutshell, “In-App Purchases” allow the folks who create “free” apps to make money off of them by offering extra features and capabilities for a fee.

You can indeed use the app for free as promised, but if you want to use the extra features you’ll have to fork over some cash.

Sometimes a phone’s owner will make one of these optional purchases by accident, but far too often they’re made by kids, either on their own iPhone or one owned by a parent.

If you want to make sure this never happens to you, simply disable all “In-App Purchases” on your own iPhone and/or on your child’s phone. Here’s how: 

1 – Open the Settings menu and tap General.

2 – Tap Screen Time.

3 – Tap Content & Privacy Restrictions and toggle that setting to On if it isn’t already set that way (the slider should turn green).

4 – Tap iTunes & App Store Purchases.

5 – Tap In-app purchases and then select Don’t Allow.

6 – (Optional) While you’re on this screen you can also set your iPhone to require the user to enter a password before being allowed to make a future purchase.

That’s all there is to it. From now on no one will be able to make an “In-App Purchase” on this particular iPhone.

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