Click the “+” icon at the bottom left of the main taskbar.This feature applies to all devices with the same iCloud account used for Screen Time. Select the “Every Day” or “Custom” option and set the time that the MacBook will be locked.Īs the name says it all, this setting allows you to control the amount of time your child spends each day on certain apps or categories of apps.This feature applies to all devices that are using iCloud accounts used for Screen Time. This is useful if you want to restrict your kids from watching Netflix at night or just want them to not use the device at certain times. During Downtime, only certain apps you allow or phone calls will be active. The Downtime feature allows you to set the time your MacBook is inactive. The approach is slightly different depending on the version of macOS you have, in this article CyberPurify will help you set up via macOS Big Sur. Bad luck I guess.Once your child’s account is set up, it’s time to enable parental controls.

I've tried this on my 27' iMac, 15' macbook pro, my wife's new macbook, and my co-workers brand new macbook pro and the parental controls never work fully correctly. Pretty annoying since the entire reason I switched to Macs in the first place is for the kids and online safety. For some reason the parental controls have never worked that great since I initially switched from Windows to OS X (around mountain lion OS). Hopefully Apple gets all this stuff worked out in future updates. However, I don't want it to break again, so I'm hesitant to touch any of it, ha! When I get home tonight, I'll try to mess with the other restrictions like time restrictions and allowed / disallowed sites. So right now I just have it restricting the app store & Safari - and it seems to be doing ok. If I go in and try to restrict all but iMessage, it breaks and won't save the settings. For some reason, if I only restrict a couple apps, instead of a lot, it seems to work. So I went in and only restricted a couple apps, and didn't touch any of the other settings and it's working (I'm trying to make it so my teen can only use iMessage for her friends, and internet only enabled when my wife and I are home). I tried recreating the managed accounts several times to no avail. I am at the office right now so I will get you that info when I get home.Īlso, just an update: I erased everything and redid the whole computer last night out of frustration - which fixed the speed issue, the iMac is much snappier now - hopefully that lasts =)Īs far as parental controls, at first it was NOT working, doing the same thing. Thanks for troubleshooting with me, and Sorry for the late reply, I usually get emails when someone replies and I didn't for some reason. OSX is updated as much as it can be (no updates showing through app store, so I'm assuming it's updated all the way).Īnyone have any ideas? I initially bought this thing solely for the kids and it's sat near unused, partly because the parental controls have never worked great, and now they just don't work at all.Īre there any alternatives to use, or should I try to figure this out? I may just wipe the whole computer and start from scratch to fix this, but it's a total Deja Vu with my old Windows machines. It was always blocking sites, even when I would always allow them, or allowing apps that I didn't approve, etc. However, even when it did work, it was still pretty buggy. This must be a somewhat new bug, because I remember it working better in Yosemite. Nothing I do seems to work or make the settings stick. The MAIN issue is that I set the controls up, then log into each respective account to make sure it works, only to find out the settings I created aren't being saved. Long story short, my kids are starting to use it frequently, so I decided to make them each an account and add restrictions based on each of them (time limits, what apps they can use, what web sites they can visit, etc). Haven't used it much because it's incredibly slow, which I attribute to the super slow hard drive (need to upgrade to a solid state).

So I have a relatively new 27' iMac (purchased around 2013-14).

Macbook parental controls