New App Store Age Verification Laws (2026)

If you’ve recently tried to download an app for your child and hit an unfamiliar prompt — confirming you’re an adult, setting up a Family Sharing group, or being told your kid’s Screen Time settings just changed automatically — you haven’t done anything wrong, and it’s not a bug. Several states passed new App Store age verification laws that took effect in 2026, and Apple and Google have been rolling out real changes to comply. If the app in question was something as low-stakes as a coloring app, the sudden friction can feel disproportionate. Here’s what’s actually going on.

What Actually Changed in 2026

Four states have passed laws requiring app stores to verify a user’s age and get parental consent before a minor can download or buy apps: Texas, Utah, Louisiana, and California. Texas, Utah and Louisiana’s laws took effect during 2026; California’s AB 1043 (the Digital Age Assurance Act) was signed in September 2026 and is set to take effect January 1, 2027. Other states are considering similar legislation, so this list is likely to grow — check your own state’s current status rather than assuming these four are the only ones, since exact effective dates have shifted as litigation and rulemaking continue.

Under these laws, app stores are required to:

Verify age at account creation, sorting accounts into brackets — typically children (under 13), younger teens (13–15), older teens (16–17) and adults (18+).
Get parental consent before a minor downloads an app, buys an app, or makes an in-app purchase.
Limit what age-verification data can be used for — developers generally can’t repurpose it beyond age verification, and are required to delete it afterward rather than retain it indefinitely.

What This Actually Means If You’re Downloading a Coloring App

In practice, for a lot of families this means:

Your child likely needs to be part of a Family Sharing group (Apple) or a supervised account (Google) rather than using an independent Apple ID or Google account, if they’re under 18 in an affected state.
Ask to Buy — or an equivalent purchase-approval setting — is automatically turned on for minors in some states, and can’t be turned off, even by a parent who might otherwise prefer a different setup. This is a stricter default than what we’d previously recommended parents configure manually — see our guide on stopping accidental in-app purchases for the settings this overlaps with.
An account’s age range is shared with app developers by default and, per Apple’s own documentation, can’t be turned off — a genuine privacy tradeoff in exchange for the added purchase protections.

None of this is specific to coloring apps — it applies to every category in the App Store — but it’s often a coloring app or another simple kids’ app where a parent first notices the change, precisely because it’s usually the first thing they try to install for a young child.

What Apple Specifically Has Rolled Out

Apple’s Texas-specific requirements (tied to the state’s SB 2420) require confirming you’re 18 or older on new accounts created in Texas, with anyone under 18 required to be part of a Family Sharing group. Separately, on September 14, 2026, Apple released broader child safety updates across Screen Time — including Time Allowances that let parents set limits by category (Entertainment, Games, Social Media) rather than only a single overall daily limit, alongside an easier way to adjust app and web access.

If you haven’t set up Family Sharing for your household yet, this is a reasonable moment to do it even outside an affected state — the requirement is expanding, and the underlying settings (Ask to Buy, Screen Time, content restrictions) are the same ones we’d recommend regardless of what your specific state currently requires.

What to Actually Do Right Now

Set up Family Sharing if you haven’t already (Settings → your name → Family, on iPhone/iPad), and add your child as a child account rather than letting them use an independent Apple ID.
Expect an age-range prompt on new accounts, especially if you’re in Texas, Utah, Louisiana or California — this is expected behavior, not a security issue with a specific app.
Don’t try to bypass it by entering a false birthdate to skip the friction — beyond the obvious terms-of-service issue, it also disables the purchase-approval protections the law is specifically designed to give you.
Review Ask to Buy and Screen Time settings once Family Sharing is set up — for minors in affected states, some of this is now forced on, but it’s worth understanding what’s active rather than assuming.

Age-verification laws address who can download an app and whether a purchase needs approval — they don’t say anything about whether the app itself is actually well-made or safe to hand to a kid once it’s installed. That’s a separate question, and it’s the one our own testing is built around.

Every coloring app we recommend is tested hands-on against our BCA Score framework, with safety as one of eight specific criteria — not just a read-through of the app’s own store description. We check for ads during testing, confirm the app doesn’t route kids to outside content or social features, and note the age range and interface complexity the app actually suits, rather than taking a developer’s “ages 4+” label at face value. Apps developed by companies affiliated with our editorial team are held to the exact same checklist and clearly disclosed — see our disclosure policy.

We’re careful not to overstate this: a hands-on test is a snapshot, not a permanent guarantee, which is exactly the nuance we walk through in why “ad-free” is harder to verify than it sounds. What we can say is that every safety-related claim on this site reflects what we actually found during testing, not marketing copy — the new age-verification rules are a useful additional layer on top of that, not a replacement for it.

Our Take

We’re not lawyers, and this isn’t legal advice — state laws in this area are actively being litigated and refined, so treat this as a general orientation rather than a definitive account of your specific state’s current requirements. What we can say from the app-testing side: the direction of these laws — mandatory parental consent, restricted data use, default purchase protections for minors — lines up with what we’ve been recommending parents set up manually in our own safety and in-app purchase guides. If anything, having some of this forced on by default for minors closes a gap that previously required a parent to know to configure it themselves.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this affect free coloring apps too, or just paid apps? It affects app downloads generally, not just paid ones — the age-verification and parental-consent requirements apply at the account level, before any specific app is downloaded, regardless of that app’s price.

I’m not in Texas, Utah, Louisiana or California — does any of this apply to me? The specific legal requirements currently apply to accounts created in those states, but Apple and Google’s underlying account and Family Sharing systems are largely the same everywhere, and more states are considering similar laws. Setting up Family Sharing properly is a reasonable step regardless of your state.

Will this slow down downloading a simple app like a coloring app? The friction is mostly one-time, at account setup — once a child’s account is properly configured under Family Sharing with the right age bracket, downloading individual apps (including free coloring apps) works close to normally, subject to whatever purchase-approval settings are active.

Sources: App store age verification laws for Android & iOS apps (Median.co), Apple’s new child safety features now available, Age requirements for managing an Apple Account in the United States (Texas) — Apple Support, App store accountability acts: What you need to know (McDermott Will & Emery)