You scrolled past your allowance and nothing happened. Annoying, and almost always fixable. Work down this list in order. It is the same checklist the app runs for you under Settings → Blocking not working?, where problems are automatically sorted to the top.
First, the things Tollgate can check for you
- Screen Time access is on. If it got switched off, nothing is being guarded and the Home screen will say “Guard inactive.” Fix it here.
- Apps are actually picked. No guarded apps, no gate. Settings → Guarded apps.
- The guard timer is running. If Home says “Guard didn’t restart,” iOS refused to start the usage timer. That has its own article.
- The guard is not paused. If you tapped “Pause for today,” gates are off until midnight. Home will say so. Tap Resume to bring them back early.
- Low Power Mode is off. In Low Power Mode, iOS delays or drops the Screen Time reporting the gate depends on, so shields fire late or not at all. Charge up or switch it off.
- You have at least 1 GB free. When storage runs low, iOS starts dropping Screen Time events. Delete something you were not watching anyway.
Then, the iOS settings only you can see
- App & Website Activity must be on. Settings → Screen Time → App & Website Activity. If it is off, Apple’s entire usage counting machinery is off, and no third party app can shield anything. This is the single most common cause.
- Content & Privacy Restrictions can block the shield. Settings → Screen Time → Content & Privacy Restrictions. If restrictions are locked down (common on phones that once had parental controls), the shield may be suppressed.
- Share Across Devices can confuse the count. Settings → Screen Time → Share Across Devices. Usage from your iPad or old phone can pollute the count on this one. Turn it off if the gate seems to fire at random times or never.
The two big hammers
- Restart your iPhone. Genuinely the fix more often than it should be. Screen Time’s daemons occasionally wedge, and a reboot clears them.
- Toggle App & Website Activity off and back on. The last resort, and it works. Your Tollgate history is unaffected. Today’s usage count restarts from zero, so the next gate arrives a full allowance later.
If you have walked the whole list and the shield still will not show, email us with your iOS version and roughly when the gate stopped firing. That combination is rare, and we want to see it.