Why the lists go stale.
Search for ad-free toddler apps and you will find roundups: ten best, twenty-one best, updated for the year. The problem is not that they are dishonest. The problem is that an app is not a fixed object. An app that shipped with no ads in January can add them in an update in June, and nothing about the roundup changes. Nobody re-installs twenty apps to re-check.
The other problem is quieter. "Free" and "no ads" are an unusual pair. Making an app costs money every month it exists, so if you are not paying and there are no ads, something else is covering it: the app is a taster for a subscription, or it sells what it learns about the people using it, or it is being run at a loss by someone who will eventually stop. That is not always sinister. It is just worth knowing which one you are looking at before you hand the phone over.
What Apple's rules actually promise.
There is one real guarantee on the App Store, and it applies to a specific shelf: the Kids Category. Apple's App Review Guidelines say that apps in the Kids Category "should not include third-party analytics or third-party advertising", must not send personally identifiable information or device information to third parties, and must keep links out of the app and purchasing behind a parental gate.
Read the exceptions too, because they are in the same paragraph. Third-party analytics are allowed in limited cases if they collect no identifying information, and third-party contextual advertising is allowed in limited cases if the ad service publishes its practices and has humans reviewing the creatives for age appropriateness. So Kids Category is a strong signal, not a promise of a blank screen.
The useful part is what it rules out. An app that is not in the Kids Category is not bound by any of this, whatever its store page suggests. And there is a naming rule worth carrying with you: Apple reserves phrases like "For Kids" and "For Children" in an app's name, subtitle, icon, screenshots and description for Kids Category apps. An app calling itself a kids app is telling you which shelf it is on.
Four checks on the store page.
All four are on the App Store listing, before you install anything. None of them needs an account or a tool.
- The category line. Scroll to the information block near the bottom of the listing. If the category reads Kids, with an age band, the rules above apply. If it reads Education or Games, they do not.
- The In-App Purchases line. It sits under the app title, next to the price. If it is there, tap through: Apple lists every item and its price. A free app with a weekly subscription in that list is a subscription app, and the free part is the trial.
- The App Privacy section. The best thing it can say is "Data Not Collected". Anything under "Data Used to Track You" is the one to stop at, because tracking across other companies' apps is what advertising needs and nothing a two year old does requires.
- The age rating, then the screenshots. A 4+ rating is the floor, not a recommendation. Then look at the screenshots the way your child will see the app: count how many things move, and look for the small print at the bottom of a picture, which is where a banner ad usually sits.
One check is worth more than the other three together, and it is not on the store page. Install it, and use it yourself for five minutes before your child does. Ads in children's apps often appear after a few rounds of play rather than on the first screen, which is exactly where a store listing and a roundup both stop looking.
What the store cannot tell you.
Apple does not have a field for "this app shows ads". There is no badge, no filter, no line in the listing. Every signal above is circumstantial: the category tells you which rules bind the developer, the privacy label tells you what they declared, the purchases list tells you how they make money. Put together they are usually enough to guess right. They are not proof.
Which is the honest reason a page like this cannot end with a list of safe apps. We would be guessing on your behalf, and we would stop re-checking within a year, the same way the roundups do.
Wibbo against its own checklist.
It would be unfair to hand you a test and skip it, so: Wibbo has no ads, no analytics, no tracking code of any kind, and collects nothing at all from your child. Our App Store listing reads Data Not Collected, and the privacy policy says the same thing at length.
The part that answers the question this page opened with: Wibbo is free to download and there is a subscription inside it, behind a parental gate. That is how there are no ads. We would rather charge the parent than sell the child's attention, and we would rather write that sentence down than let you find it at the checkout. If you would rather not pay anything at all, the flash cards are free to print, with no email wall and nothing to sign up for.
Offline belongs on the same list, because an app that needs a connection is an app that can fetch something new while you are not looking. Wibbo streams by default, but the grown-ups area lets you save whole worlds to the device, and a saved world plays with nothing coming in at all.
One check we do not currently pass: our category is Education, not Kids. So by our own rule above, take the paragraph before this as a claim we are making rather than a guarantee Apple is enforcing on us, and go and read the store page yourself.
For what an app should be like once you have picked one, the rest of the checklist is in the screen time guide, and the way to actually sit and use it is in the flash card guide.