Apple rolls out OS-level age verification in latest iOS 26.4 dev beta
(Not sure if this is worldwide or only in some countries)
Updating to iOS 26.4DB2 will put your phone into a parental-restricted mode with adult websites blocked on all browsers, warning prompts every time you try to send or receive an explicit image on a messaging app, and all social media apps blocked on the App Store (in Australia)
The settings to disable this mode are locked off until you verify your age either with a credit card, photo ID, or though information Apple already has (like the age of your account).
I've been an apple user my entire adult life but this might finally be the thing that forces me off the platform. Do any other long term apple users have some tips about migrating? I've heard Ashai Linux is pretty good on mac hardware these days and I've been thinking about GrapheneOS for a while.
I find it odd to protect children they will stalk the hell out of us but won’t arrest known pedophiles …
I hate the world
It's not to protect children though. It's for political surveillance.
Exactly. Governments around the world, including the U.S., of course, have made it crystal clear through their actions that they don't give a fuck about protecting children.
Better to just hate the whole Epstein Class. They trash the world for everyone else..
We’ve had a name for them for the last 200 years: the capitalist class, or to be more precise, the haute bourgeoisie. The 1% of the 1%.
The painful irony being that the bourgeoisie were still below the nobles
If everyone voting for these age requirements don't also vote to require you to use an ID to unlock the safety on a gun or remove a knife from the knife rack, they aren't voting on this to protect the children.
Knives and guns need age verification before someone seeing Kate Upton showing her breasts.
Im going side with none of it needs age verification, and all of it needs parental guidance
At least knives have a use outside of killing
Yeah apparently it's fine for them to fuck kids but too immoral to risk kids seeing people fucking.
Also they'll deny trans kids puberty blockers which are proven to be safe and reversible, and the alternative creates harm.
And they'll censor the internet for 'children' (a 17 year old is not a child) to prevent them finding community, support or education outside their IRL religious and harmful bubbles.
It was never about actually protecting children
In America.
This is insane. They have to view your images to deem of they are explicit...
Basically a year away from a universal internet ID that will track all movements and can be restricted if your government doesn't like you.
Apple already views your images for child porn.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58145943
They probably do it for people like Donald and all his Epstein friends to save and pre order.
Has this expanded from iCloud uploads? It's crazy how using a device now requires users to allow company full access yo everything.
I guess I never believed it was limited to iCloud.
Do they though? As a side note, I read the documentation for the proposed system of scanning and it was actually really well designed for privacy. The problem was if they were forced to expand the scope to include other material such as, for example, proof of protest against a regime.
Com’n. All loss of privacy is a foot on the door to access more.
Wanted to view*
If you read the article, they don't.
Who was the guy several years ago who was charged with child pornography for receiving a pic of his infant son’s rash for the doctor on his phone? Was that not iCloud via Apple scanning for questionable images?
Something I heard on the old OSINT podcast years ago.
Scanning yes, viewing no.
I remember hearing about that though. On first glance that shouldn't be possible with what apple says they do. I feel like there was another detail I can't recall that made more sense of it, but maybe not.
Hey degen, I’ve got your journal in my hands right now. It’s ok though, I promise only to look at the cover and not read it. You’re cool with that right?
Immich FTW
This also means they are tracking all the websites you are going to.
They already are. Well depends on who they are I guess but someone is.
This would be pre vpn or anything else you could do to protect your privacy - if it’s at the OS level it’s before the browser and VPN level
That’s not happening now, but it’s the only way the are gonna be able to to check content to make sure “ the children are safe “
To get a sim card in Australia you need to show identification. There is no anonymity.
For a phone sim.....of course you do. I mean they would know who pays the bill anyway right? Unless you have a phone company that takes bitcoin or cash only.
Phone companies are required to collect and retain IDing info of customers to activate a phone number in Australia. There's no way around it unfortunately
You don't need ID to buy a sim in the US or UK, or most countries in fact. Most sims in Australia are pre-paid, not contract.
That was already happening, as the option to block sending and receiving of such content was able to be turned on in your screen time settings, and you could mandate it for your children by managing your kids accounts on the family organizers device. If someone is under the age of 13 they are required to be on a family share, and if you don't have "Ask to Buy" enabled, from what I know you won't get a refund for anything with the excuse my kid bought this without permission.
Overall it all seems logical, but in those scenarios the ages and requirements are mostly all controlled by the parent.
Scary. I had no idea it went beyond the iCloud scans. I avoided the cloud after that celebrity image leak.
Guess we might see a rise in offline or dumb devices. I wonder how this will affect other nations that already have restrictive internet access. If the
USWest becomes more locked down where would free and accessible info go?After commercial OS have age verification they will remove it from the programs because the age was already verified, right? (Padme asking Anakin)
Nope, the CA/CO legislation requires that all applications utilize the OS-level age verification API!
Doesn't that mean that the application will not have to do the verification itself, but just ask the OS?
When I first decided to switch to Linux, I started exclusively using apps that were available on Linux. This way I was able to gradually transition my workflows one app at a time without any rush. When I was ready to install Linux, I did it on a new computer so I still had access to everything on the old computer and there was no risk of going computer-less if the installation went sideways.
Also, keep in mind that Asahi only works on M1 and M2 Macs. (If you have an old Intel Mac, you can just run normal Linux without Asahi)
Oh and Veronica Explains has a great video about her experience with Asahi.
This might be a stupid question but when using ashai can you run any normal linux software or does it have to be specifically built for arm64/apple silicon?
It's gotta be built for arm64
Can you use the makefile and compile?
I'm pretty sure you can. I never did because I ended up having to go back to macos on the machine I had.
Yes, you can. It's just an ARM64 computer. The only special consideration is that the kernel uses 16K pages instead of 4K pages, but that's not something I've encountered problems with.
I hope someday any normal Linux software will be usable in Apple hardware. Unfortunately, there are hurdles.
One of the biggest hurdles was getting code accepted into the Linux kernel.
This became very frustrating for the previous Asahi Linux lead developer. He would push upstream code and the Linux developers would not accept it.
Why didn’t they accept it? Because it was written in memory-safe Rust and not in memory-unsafe C. Old Linux developers don’t want to deal with Rust. So they just refuse to include Asahi Linux updates into normal Linux software.
you're losing a lot of nuances here, just want to add for other readers.
there was and are good reasons for why code wasn't accepted
Fuuuuck with apple doing this, I wonder how long we have until this BS enters Android and Linux Kernel.
Lmao good fucking luck enforcing this on Linux. There's no central authority to handle age verification, and even if there was, it'd take less than a week for someone to make a patched version of whatever tool they use that just... Autoreports that you're an adult no matter what.
Well when we have to comply we can make a build flag everyone shut toggle off...
I suggest simply never complying. Anyone who does is a traitor. This is FOSS, they have no control over us, ZERO power to enforce compliance.
While this is the best. it is not feasible. Not many open source projects can just pay millions on fines and not think about it. Idiots making these laws cant enforce it but they will try in the only way they know. Fine and fine and fine untill a project dies.
How would they have to pay any fines if they simply say we are no longer for use in xyz place doing age verification?
Second, how would payment be enforced when there is no organization to fine?
Forgive my confusion but could they not choose to lock out web traffic without a verification? Lets say your ISP joins and says that you need x bullshit token from the government to us it, then what?
Something in gut hub can still be "in development." Nobody has to comply with every regulation before they are finished. Goddamn these vultures. They've been nonstop since SOPA and PIPA back in 2010 or whenever.
There are many distros. And you can build kernels from source.
They’re going to burn this in all the way from the sub-microprocessor DRM/TPM to the browser, aren’t they?
Yep
Google tried a few years back but there was pushback. Google will slowly boil the frog tho.
You can build browsers from source. And import open hardware from China. RISCV is getting close to usable, these days.
You can buy them now, because the US hasn’t banned their import yet, but that’s what these laws will lead to.
When general computing is outlawed, only outlaws will have general computers.
I'll meet you in the digital underground, netizen.
What...is this shit? What's the real reason behind this? What senator or governor has a brother in law in the age verification business that got this corruptioned into being a thing all of a sudden?
Surveillance data
It’s not age verification. It’s identity verification.
There is no way to truly verify age without verifying identity. And then all your data can be linked up accurately.
So now California has a governor pretending to be pro-Palestine to do damage control while signing laws that give Zionist corporations more control over your data and hardware
If you ever thought Gavin was anti-Trump, I have news for you 😄
Oh he's anti-Trump alright. But that's just meaning that he wants to take Trump's place.
So what's actually going on in Cali for them to have such a douchebag governor?
Probably strong influence from corporations, billionaires, other wealthy people, and NIMBYs, along with fearmongering from establishment media to distract from actual problems. And Democrats realizing they can't win on a pro-genocide platform so now they have to at least pretend to give a shit.
Fuck Trump tho am I rite?
Yes but Trump isn't the one doing the age verification mandates
This isnt where I parked my car.
Wait, send explicit images? I'm not a child, I get that on these platforms my privacy is pretty well gone, but is it explicitly known (confirmed from the source) that these companies scan your images too?
That feels extra fucked up. Like "hold on a sec bucko let me check this photo you're trying to send real quick to make sure it's not titties "
They definitely do. That’s how you can search photos by their content on iOS or android.
where do you think they got the database for their porn generating llms?
I bet people will just accept it and not even think twice about it.
I see you too were born on January 1st 1970.
For sure. Majority of people will happilly take a selfy and send it to whatever company without a second thought.
To be clear, these are Apple users. Most of them will take just about any abuse Apple is willing to throw their way.
Pretty much yeah
username checks out
Thank you, Tim Apple, for making 2026 the year of the Linux desktop (but not necessarily the Ubuntu, Fedora, or Mint desktop).
Rut. Thanks for ruining my day, sigh. That shit better be a patch away from removal / spoofing...
I'm hoping the implementation is something like 'check this box to confirm you're over 18,' and nothing more.
I have a Macbook air now. Do you recommend me to buy a Lenovo thinkpad? Qubes os is the top pick, I heard.
Linux can run on macbooks, you can probably look up the model online and see if it has good support. I used to run debian on a macbook, though that macbook was from 2013 or something like that.
On the other hand, if you can sell your macbook and get more than a good thinkpad (for your use) is selling for, I would do that.
The air model has a M4 chip. Fedora, Whonix and Quebo doesn't support... I'll wait for another months.
I’ll figure out a way to bypass this or switch to Linux entirely.
And then probably end up in a camp.
The example of the age of your account made me realize I’m old
Wow I just checked when the first purchase was made on my Apple account, turns out it’s old enough to vote
Lame - never updating my stuff and will move off smartphones.
Not buying a car made after 2018.
Not buying electronics made after 2025.
Simple as.
If the West follows into the footsteps of the propaganda they are spreading against China, I'd rather go live in China because at least there people don't live paycheck to paycheck despite working multiple jobs. Every accusation against China was a confession.
Some people in tier 1 cities don't live like that, but the vast majority do. As an average person, you would not enjoy China more than your western country.
Could someone share a non alarmist take here? I have seen posts elsewhere that apple's "using information we already have to assign you an age-range" is better than other more invasive methods.
I (regrettably) acquiesced when prompted to use this method in order to access health insurance app. Am I cooked? permanent all powerful spyware time?
It's likely that Apple already has age data on you because they collect all kinds of data including payment details from you. If you use any paid apple service (pay for apps on the app store, pay for music, or cloud services, use the air tags etc), it's likely they already know your age.
The reason to be worried about this isn't because now apple has this information, but because of the progression of this information being demanded, shared, and hoarded by less secure age verification services.
Anyone hoarding personal identifying information is a target for criminal enterprises that want that information.
Apple can be hacked, but you have to evaluate your threat model and what information you've already given them, as well as what information is already out there on the internet about you.
Extant information is safer than just uploading an id (which is what the laws want). No one needs to know your birthdate or identity if your account is 18 years old. No one needs to know your birthdate or identity if you have a cc on file (you gotta be an adult to have a credit card and therefore to have credit card on file).
This is the best possible solution, where there isn’t a requirement to upload a scan of a government issued id.
Presumably if there’s a switch to turn it on then there’s also a switch to turn it back off again.
Not necessarily. Write once memory, fuses, etc. can make that a one way Street
What if you sell your phone?
I'm not saying that it's been thought through for this particular use case... Just saying that you can make one way changes
yeah that's a fair thought. it was more of a push notification than a switch.
i had a cursory look around and didn't find it but i could ask apple support
"Must be outside of California, Colorado, and Brazil to download this Linux ISO"
"Must be outside of California, Colorado, and Brazil to proceed with installation"
I'm in canada!
oh i'm not in California, I'm in Egypt. I'm waist deep in denial.
Which do y'all think is worse? [Serious]
I don't do serious, sorry
Eventually: must be in Antarctica to use this distro
Does this mean they caved in to the UK's client-side scanning stuff after all?
Sadly graphene will have to implement age verification too at some point as these laws spread like the ones in California that require ALL os providers including Linux to implement it albeit a pointless user dob input at account creation or be fined into the afterlife
How would they enforce that on an open-source platform?
By destroying all general-purpose computing available to consumers.
You mean, like...rounding up every computer and burning them?
I really don't know what you mean by this.
I mean DRMing and Tivoizing every new computer so that it can't be rooted or jailbroken and Linux won't run on it. Requiring a license from the state to have a compiler. You know, The Right to Read or Unauthorized Bread type shit.
Well...I dunno. I don't think you're crazy or anything, I'm sure there are some who absolutely do want to do that. But they've been trying to get rid of digital piracy for thirty years and haven't made any headway, so I'm dubious about how well that would work.
Only because, up to this point, we've been successful at pushing back against this tyranny. But make no mistake: that is the real goal of this "age verification" bullshit.
Maybe so, but there's no profit motive for tech companies to aid users with piracy. There is one to continue providing general computing to users. So if we were able to win in the former, the latter should be a cake walk.
Probably over time. Look at the RAM situation - the fear is this will be the norm. At best.
Right, people can just compile their own, which I will absolutely do if need be
Compile it on what tho?
Already running Linux, so Linux. And they're not going to be able to stop people sharing their compiled images
The California law doesn't require age verification, just a setting on the account that e.g. a parent can set. It's still stupid, but it's not what apple is supposedly doing here.
Yep, I’m not sure how come everyone thinks graphene will somehow be exempt.
They're open source and their OEM partner, Lenovo is out of US sphere of influence. They can patch the code when it's put on the phone, just like how manufacturers modify Android source code.
I hope GrapheneOS makes it easy to avoid and still verify integrity.
If they're forced to have them in USA and EU, so be it. That's their policy problem for their people. It's a win for everyone else.
I love how big corp is already ready. It's almost as if they somehow knew all along that all the govs with bribable legislators would be making laws they all seemed to arbitrarily adopt at once. Can't wait for the shill AI slop response to this comment making it seem like a good idea.
They should just be done with it and implant an id chip at birth
Data freely available to our capitalistic gods and politicians
Alright, time to go to a different phone. Gonna buy Fairphone tomorrow.
(Or Motorola, if it's true that it's gonna have GrapheneOS on it).
It will likely be on a specific future model
I just installed Graphene OS on my Pixel 6 yesterday and it runs like a champ. You should be able to pick up a used Pixel 6 or newer for pretty cheap as another option
Majority will accept it, they dont care and governments and corpos like this
its been 4 months and I am not regret about my switch to GrapheneOS. The only thing that can make this 100% perfect is creating a Google account that does not tie to your phone number.
So you need a phone number these days? That's something I've read a lot of mixed reports about
in some cases where they have good enough info about you already (creating from an android phone that isn't "fishy" enough, etc), you can create a google acc without associating a phone number, at least it's not shown on the google account info menu.
yes some Play store apps are country specific so instead of switching my default country, which stupid Google only allows 1 per year btw, I want to create different profiles with different Google accounts. You cannot do that without showing that these accounts belong to whichever phone number you have
I’m only on 26.3 and I got an iOS age verification popup today when opening an app for hospital/medical stuff. I was able to just close it and continue but it was surprising.
I would imagine the health app has multiple age groups. Where as an 18+ can probably save and share medical data to doctors or store it in iCloud, it's probably illegal some places for minors to have health data being backed up to Apple's shit.
26.3.1 will be the last version without the mandatory verification
i accepted this to use a health insurance app. anyway to go back from here?
Well, my 2G Nokia candy bar phone will come in handy
Unfortunately, 2G is fairly insecure.
For what?//can't even make a call on it as 2g is shut off or well be Shirley depending whee you live.
It’s under settings > Apple account (the bubble with your name if you’re signed in) > age range for apps.
The first time you click it you’re asked to go ahead or update your birthday in the account first.
Inside you can pick to always, never or ask first before sharing your age range with some app and it says you can see what apps have asked for your age range.
Can I still pick 1/1/1900 when I update?
Is it regional? Am I safe to update in Europe?
From what I've read online it's going to be worldwide
I know this isn't the point of the article, but I'm starting to get really pissy about software updates implementing high-level non-security related changes to my fucking fully paid for device!
It doesn't do anything but I'm starting to refuse to agree to any new user agreements.
It's pretty much nothing.
I have 3 different AI agents that were forced onto my phone between Google, Samsung, and Microsoft.
It'll be baked into the ToS somewhere but I agree it's bullshit. Years ago I bought a youtuber downloader app (I know I should've just used yt-dl) and they released an update that removed support for half the websites and locked them behind a new higher-priced tier. None of it was mentioned in the changelog, just a prompt that came up after you'd installed the new build. I was able to reinstall the previous version and keep using it but I was still so pissed off
I don’t want to live on this planet anymore
I wonder if this is why they’ve been so forceful in moving capable devices to iOS 26.
Has anyone checked to see if this exists in iOS 18.7.7 or 18.8 betas?
Good, I am waiting on my brand new Fairphone 6.
It's awesome. Welcome!
The dream is over. The internet and technology are over. It was fun while it lasted, and it is time to re-adapt to a reality without dependence on 100% privacy invading surveillance.
It's time to grow up.
You think this isn't coming to other devices? Google will presumably add this to Android and apps will follow suit by looking to the OS to verify your age so other forks will probably have to add it. Linux on smartphones is dead in the water so what's the alternative?
You elected the government and regulator who caused this. Make sure it doesn't happen again.
I sure as hell didn't vote for them. But regardless of the government these laws always seem to have bipartisan support. I've avoided this crap so far with VPNs and fake IDs but something baked into the OS like this I haven't been able to fool. Yet
Can you try to send an explicit image while offline?
I just hope this doesnt impact macos until the end of the year, then I will be able to move to linux on my laptop.
You know they want to impose age verification on Linux as well right? Linux is still the way to go, but I am so not ok with what they ate trying to do.
There is no way thats going to happen. There is way too many os's the govenment can't control all of them.
i use fedora asahi remix with kde on M1, so far it's great except the battery life is not as good as in macos but i don't care ... finally i escaped the shitty glass design among other shitty things apple does... and have been using Grephene for more than a year, It's honestly the most stable, seamless OS i tried, the kind of OS that just works and doesn't annoy you. imo even better than ios !
People in CA and CO: this shit is why people hate your states. Get better politicians ffs.