App to see texts on another iphone?

iOS does not let any app read another iPhone's Messages. There is no SMS API, no background service and no permission screen that grants it. Every product claiming to show an iPhone's texts is doing one of three things: reading iCloud backups with the child's Apple ID and password, relying on a jailbreak, or misrepresenting what it can do. Family Sharing and Screen Time do not expose message content at all — Screen Time reports minutes per app, and Communication Limits only control who can be contacted during downtime.

What genuinely exists:

• iCloud backup extraction. With the Apple ID, password and the 2FA code, a monitoring service can pull messages that were present in the last backup. It is retrospective — usually the last nightly backup — and it breaks if backups are off or the account uses Advanced Data Protection.
• Jailbreak-based tools. Full access, but require jailbreaking the phone, void the warranty, and break on most iOS updates.
• Apple's own family tools. Ask to Buy, Communication Safety (nudity detection in Messages, on-device), and Communication Limits — protective, but they don't show you conversations.

Ownership and consent decide legality. A parent monitoring a minor child's iPhone they provided is generally lawful; reading another adult's messages is not, regardless of how the data is obtained.

Full disclosure: we build Ultimate Phone Spy, a parental-control app for exactly this — web history, app activity and screen time in one dashboard. Plans start at $16/month on the 12-month option, and the current plans are on our pricing page.

Honest guidance on platform choice: if message visibility is the actual requirement, Android is the stronger platform — SMS and notification access are available to a consented app, while iOS only offers backup snapshots. On iPhone, the realistic parent toolkit is Apple's built-in safety features plus conversation, and a dashboard that covers location, screen time and app usage rather than message bodies.

Before buying anything for an iPhone, ask the vendor two questions in writing: does it need the Apple ID and 2FA, and does it work with Advanced Data Protection enabled? Vague answers there mean the product will not deliver what the sales page shows.