Declared Age Range is an Apple framework that lets an application ask the operating system how old its user is and receive an age band in reply, never a date of birth. The app nominates up to three age thresholds, and the system answers with the range the person falls into: under 13, or 13 to 15, or 16 and over. It shipped with iOS 26 in September 2025 and carries Apple's response to a wave of laws requiring app marketplaces to establish a user's age and hand that finding to developers.

The framework exists because two obligations pull against each other. Legislators want applications to know whether the person on the other side of the screen is a child. Data protection law, and Apple's own positioning, push towards holding as little personal information as possible. An age band settles the first demand without conceding much to the second: an app learns that its user sits between 13 and 15, and nothing else.

How the request works

A developer enables the Declared Age Range capability on the app target in Xcode, adding the com.apple.developer.declared-age-range entitlement. At runtime the app calls requestAgeRange, passing what Apple calls age gates: the minimum ages that matter to the product. Three gates are the maximum, producing four ranges, each at least two years wide. A request naming 13, 15 and 18 sorts users into under 13, 13 to 14, 15 to 17, and 18 or over.

The system presents a sheet describing what is being asked. The reply arrives as an enumeration with two cases: sharing, carrying an age range object, or declinedSharing. That object exposes lowerBound and upperBound, both optional integers. A nil lowerBound means the person sits beneath the app's lowest gate; a nil upperBound means they meet or exceed the highest. Apple's documentation is explicit that the response should be read as a band, never as an exact age.

Two further fields do the compliance work. The first is ageRangeDeclaration, an enumeration describing how the band was set: selfDeclared, where the person signed into iCloud and entered it, or guardianDeclared, where a parent, guardian or Family Organiser did. From iOS 26.2 it widened to distinguish paymentChecked, governmentIDChecked and checkedByOtherMethod, each with a guardian variant, returned only in certain regions. The second is activeParentalControls, indicating whether Screen Time or Family Controls restrictions such as communication limits are active, which tells an app to route permission requests through PermissionKit rather than its own settings screen.

Caching is deliberate and non-obvious. Apple states that when a person crosses into a new band, on a thirteenth birthday for instance, the interface keeps returning the previous range until the anniversary of the original declaration. The purpose is privacy: repeated polling cannot reveal a birthday. Immediate access to a higher tier requires changing the setting manually, under Personal Information and then Age Range for Apps.

Regulated regions behave differently

Two properties govern which mode an app is in. isEligibleForAgeFeatures returns true when local law imposes age obligations on the user, and false on macOS, where the system does not require age assurance. requiredRegulatoryFeatures, added in iOS 26.4, returns a set drawn from declaredAgeRangeRequired, significantAppChangeRequiresParentalConsent and significantAppChangeRequiresAdultNotification.

In a regulated region the system supplies the band using categories written into the applicable statute rather than the gates the developer requested, and the person may not be able to decline. Elsewhere sharing is voluntary and the developer's gates apply. Texas Senate Bill 2420 supplies the American template with four categories: under 13, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, and over 18. Apple activated regulated behaviour for new accounts in Texas, and describes the same treatment in Utah from May 6, 2026 and Louisiana from July 1, 2026.

Origin and evolution

Apple published a white paper titled Helping Protect Kids Online in February 2025, arguing that age checks belonged at the level of individual apps rather than the storefront, and trailing an interface passing age ranges to developers without exposing birthdates. The framework arrived at WWDC in June 2025 and shipped in iOS 26. Apple rebuilt App Store age ratings the following month, replacing two categories with five on July 24, 2025 and setting a questionnaire deadline of January 31, 2026. Revised App Review Guidelines on November 13, 2025 added verified-or-declared-age access requirements for creator apps and mini apps.

Legislation then set the pace. On November 4, 2025 Apple published a developer notice on Texas SB 2420, announcing an updated API in the iOS 26.2 betas alongside a Significant Change API under PermissionKit, an age rating property in StoreKit and a RESCIND_CONSENT server notification for withdrawn parental consent. The same notice recorded Apple's objection to the law it was implementing, warning that such requirements could force the collection of sensitive personal information merely to download a weather or sports application.

A district court suspended SB 2420 on December 23, 2025, and Apple paused the rollout while keeping the tools in sandbox. On February 24, 2026 the company blocked 18+ downloads in Australia, Brazil and Singapore for accounts not confirmed as adult, and opened beta updates covering Utah and Louisiana. A further ruling lifted the injunction, and Texas requirements took effect on June 4, 2026, making Declared Age Range the operative mechanism for a live statute for the first time.

Why it matters to marketers

Age has stopped being an inference and become a field. Google replaced tagForChildDirectedTreatment and tagForUnderAgeOfConsent with a single age treatment tag on May 18, 2026, carrying CHILD, TEEN and UNSPECIFIED values across the Google Publisher Tag and the Mobile Ads and Interactive Media Ads software development kits. A device-level band and a tag-level signal now describe the same user at different layers of the stack.

What follows from an under-18 answer is subtraction rather than targeting. Google disabled ad personalisation for accounts its models judged likely to belong to minors in the United States from July 30, 2025, having earlier consolidated five child and teen policies into one hub. Reddit switched every European teenage account to restricted chat and no ad personalisation when its checks began on June 24, 2026. Meta removed 756,000 under-16 accounts in Australia in seven months. Each decision removes inventory from the addressable pool.

There is a second-order effect lawyers have flagged more loudly than marketers. An app that previously assumed an adult audience now receives, unprompted, an authoritative signal that some users are 14. Under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, known as COPPA, and its state analogues, that constitutes actual knowledge.

Limitations and disputes

The name concedes the central weakness. A declared age range is declared, and Apple's documentation warns that the data originates with an end user or their guardian, and that compliance responsibility rests with the developer. The confirmed and governmentIDChecked values narrow the gap in some regions, but a self-declared 18 from a 14-year-old returns the same shape of answer as a verified one, distinguishable only by reading the declaration field.

Coverage is partial in three directions. The framework requires iOS 26, iPadOS 26 or macOS 26, and Apple states that existing accounts on iOS 18 and earlier are unaffected. It covers applications, not the mobile web. And developers posting to Apple's forums report that some Texas users for whom the interface returns both isEligibleForAgeFeatures and declaredAgeRangeRequired as true can still decline to share, leaving the app with nothing.

The regulatory picture underneath is unsettled. Apple's activation dates for Utah and Louisiana do not align with the statutory timetables in the underlying acts, since Utah amended its law in March 2026 to delay developer obligations, and legal trackers differ on which state duties are in force. Whether age checking belongs at the storefront remains contested. Google's global director of privacy, safety and security policy, Kate Charlet, argued in June 2025 that centralised verification multiplies risk by spreading children's data across every developer that requests it.

Declaration does not fix classification either. Research on 4,346 artificial intelligence companion applications found 60% rated as accessible to minors. An accurate age band checked against an inaccurate rating still produces the wrong outcome.

Not the same as

Play Age Signals is Google's Android equivalent, returning ageLower and ageUpper with defaults of 0 to 12, 13 to 15, 16 to 17 and 18 plus, and refreshing a cached band within two to eight weeks of a birthday rather than on a declaration anniversary.

Age rating describes content. Apple's five tiers, from 4+ to 18+, classify what an app contains; Declared Age Range describes who is holding the phone. The two intersect where a rating change counts as a significant change under Texas law, triggering a fresh consent request.

Age range targeting in advertising platforms means demographic buckets such as 25 to 34, used to select an audience. Declared Age Range removes features and personalisation rather than selecting anybody.

Recent developments

Apple's age assurance guidance lists requiredRegulatoryFeatures and the significant update acknowledgement sheet as iOS 26.4 additions, on top of the iOS 26.2 layer that added verification-method values and eligibility signalling.

Declaration obligations around it have tightened. Apple fixed a 13+ floor for applications declaring social media capability from September 2026, with an under-13 exclusion route open to developers who pair it with Declared Age Range, and set a 12+ minimum in Korea for infrequent profanity in August 2026.

Adjacent signals continue to converge. Facial age estimation supplies a probabilistic band where no declaration exists, and age assurance frames the whole category. California's Digital Age Assurance Act, requiring operating system providers to pass a self-declared bracket to apps, takes effect on January 1, 2027, extending the architecture to a fifth American state.

Timeline

  • February 2025: Apple publishes the Helping Protect Kids Online white paper, proposing age ranges shared with developers instead of birthdates.
  • May 27, 2025: Texas Senate Bill 2420, the App Store Accountability Act, is signed into law.
  • June 2025: Apple presents the Declared Age Range framework at WWDC for iOS 26.
  • July 24, 2025: App Store age ratings expand from two categories to five, with a January 31, 2026 questionnaire deadline.
  • September 2025: iOS 26 ships with Declared Age Range available worldwide, returning selfDeclared and guardianDeclared values.
  • November 4, 2025: Apple publishes its Texas SB 2420 developer notice, with updated APIs in the iOS 26.2 betas.
  • November 13, 2025: Revised App Review Guidelines add verified or declared age requirements for creator apps.
  • December 23, 2025: A district court suspends SB 2420 and Apple pauses implementation.
  • February 24, 2026: Apple blocks unconfirmed adults from 18+ downloads in Australia, Brazil and Singapore, and opens beta updates for Utah and Louisiana.
  • March 17, 2026: Google's Play Age Signals interface begins returning signals in Brazil under the Digital ECA law.
  • May 6, 2026: Age categories become available for new Apple Accounts in Utah.
  • May 28, 2026: Play Age Signals begins returning data for Texas accounts created after this date.
  • June 3, 2026: Apple announces that a court ruling has lifted the SB 2420 injunction.
  • June 4, 2026: Texas age assurance requirements take effect for new Apple Accounts.
  • July 1, 2026: Age categories become available for new Apple Accounts in Louisiana.
  • January 1, 2027: California's Digital Age Assurance Act takes effect.

Summary

Who: Apple operates the framework. Application developers query it, parents and guardians control what children share, and advertisers inherit the consequences through reduced personalisation.

What: Declared Age Range is an Apple programming interface that returns an age band rather than a birthdate, alongside a declaration method, active parental controls and signals about which regulatory duties apply.

When: Proposed in a February 2025 white paper, presented at WWDC in June 2025, shipped in iOS 26 in September 2025, extended in iOS 26.2 and iOS 26.4, and first operative against a live statute on June 4, 2026 in Texas.

Where: Available worldwide on iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and macOS 26 or later, with mandatory behaviour in regulated jurisdictions including Texas, Utah, Louisiana, Brazil, Australia and Singapore.

Why: App store accountability laws require marketplaces to establish user ages and pass them to developers. Apple's answer minimises what changes hands, returning a band instead of a date, while stating publicly that it considers the underlying requirements a privacy risk.