Articles on: iPhone and iPad

How to block porn on an iPhone

Safe Surfer makes it easy to block porn and other harmful online content on an iPhone or iPad. This guide will show you how to install Safe Surfer protection. We demonstrate this with an iPhone running iOS 26 (released in late 2025), although the steps will be similar if you are installing on a different kind of iPhone or iPad.

Step 1: Visit the Safe Surfer dashboard

If you were directed to this guide from the Safe Surfer online dashboard (My Safe Surfer), skip ahead to step 2.

Visit the Safe Surfer dashboard (https://my.safesurfer.io) on one of your personal devices. Once you've logged in, click the Devices menu on the left-hand sidebar, then click the "New device" option.

Click the "Another mobile, laptop, or desktop device" option.

Click the "iPhone and iPad" option.

Click the "Get the iPhone/iPad app" option.

You can assign this new device to a person, or you can click the Skip button to do this later.

After assigning a user (or skipping), you’ll see a QR code to be scanned within the Safe Surfer app. We’ll use this later on.

Step 2: Install protection

Before we get started, it's a good idea to check if your child has any VPN apps installed, as this will help make sure that Safe Surfer can work uninterrupted. (We'll show you how to stop VPN apps from being used later on.) You can check if any VPNs are installed by navigating to the Settings app > General > VPN & Device Management > VPN. Inside the VPN menu, if you see any unwanted VPN connections listed, you can remove them by going back to the device's Home Screen > navigate to the App Library (that is, browse through the Home Screen pages until you reach the App Library) > tap the search bar at the top to search for each VPN app (where you can then long-tap an applicable app in the search results > Delete App > Delete).

Once you're ready, tap the App Store on the device to be protected.

Tap the Search option, then tap the search bar at the top and search for "safe surfer". Once you've found the Safe Surfer app listing, tap the Get (or cloud download) button. Once Safe Surfer has finished downloading, tap the Open button.

On the prompt that appears, tap the Allow button.

Scroll to the bottom of the welcome information, then tap the Continue button.

At the bottom of the account information, tap the Continue button.

Enter a name for this device so that it can be identified later, then tap the Next button.

If you're planning to assign this device to a specific person on the Safe Surfer dashboard later on, you don't have to enter the name of the person as part of the device name.

Sign in with your Safe Surfer account details, or tap the Scan option to scan the QR code on the Safe Surfer dashboard.

If you signed in with your email address (rather than scanning the QR code on the dashboard), you can assign this device to a person, or you can tap the Skip button to do this later.

Tap the Finish button.

On the Screen Time access section, there are two options available:

If this device is signed in to a child Apple Account (that is, connected to Apple Family Sharing, where children are managed through the Settings app of your own iPhone, iPad, and/or Mac), you can connect Safe Surfer directly to Apple Screen Time for extra features. If this is the case, tap the Continue button. If you're not sure, you can try tapping the Continue button, and Safe Surfer will let you know if a child Apple Account account is signed in or not (and if a child account isn't being used, you can then tap the three-dot button at the upper-right corner > Skip setup—once you've done this, skip ahead to step 3 further below).
If you know that this device is signed in to a normal Apple Account, tap the three-dot button at the upper-right corner > Skip setup. Once you've done this, skip ahead to step 3 further below.

Continuing with option 1 (that is, connecting Safe Surfer directly to Apple Screen Time with a child Apple Account), tap the Continue button.

Tap the Allow with iCloud Sign-in button.

Enter the Apple Account details of the parent that manages the child Apple Account.

After entering the account details, if you see a prompt that suggests "Save Password?", tap the Not Now button.

Once you've done this, you'll see a message mentioning that Safe Surfer has been approved to access Screen Time. Tap the Done button.

For the purposes of this guide, we'll skip the rest of the automated setup process so that we can finish installing protection (we'll show you how some optional features work later). To do this, tap the three-dot button at the upper-right corner > Skip setup.

Step 3: Continue installing protection

On the Protection menu, tap the switch found next to Enable Internet Filtering.

Tap the Download button at the bottom of the instructions.

Safe Surfer will take you to the default browser app to download the protection installation profile (we demonstrate this with Safari in the screenshot below). Confirm the prompt that appears in the browser app (for example, if the default browser app is Safari, tap the Allow option).

In rare cases, you might not see the prompt appear. If this happens, tap the browser's search bar, then tap the blue search button to try visiting the same "api.safesurfer.io" link again. The prompt should appear after doing this.

On the Profile Downloaded prompt that appears, tap the Close button.

Go to the Home Screen, then tap the Settings app.

Navigate to the Settings app main menu, then tap the Profile Downloaded menu (found at the top).

In rare cases, the Profile Downloaded menu will be found inside a menu called More for Your [iPhone/iPad], also found at the top of the Settings app main menu. If you can't find the Profile Downloaded menu, you can also navigate to General > VPN & Device Management > under the Downloaded Profile section, tap the Safe Surfer listing.

On the card that appears, tap the Install button at the upper-right corner.

Enter the passcode used to unlock this device.

Tap the Install button at the upper-right corner.

Tap the Install button on the prompt that appears.

Once the profile has been installed, tap the tick button at the upper-right corner.

Go to the Home Screen, then tap the Safe Surfer app.

After a short moment, Safe Surfer will prompt you to set and verify a PIN (where this will lock the Safe Surfer app going forward).

Safe Surfer protection has now been successfully installed. (You can find out more about optional features and preventing uninstallation in the following steps.)

Step 4: Monitoring features

You can find out more about monitoring features by clicking this link.

Step 5: Prevent uninstallation

You can find out how to prevent uninstallation by clicking this link.

Protection complete

Great work! This device is now protected. To start monitoring protected devices, visit our easy-to-use online dashboard.

If you have any other iPhone, iPad, or iPod devices you would like to protect, simply start again from the top of the guide. If you would like to protect a different kind of device, visit our installation guides article.

Updated on: 01/09/2026

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