

- #Parental control program for mac password
- #Parental control program for mac mac
- #Parental control program for mac windows
If you want to give your kids more freedom then the second option, Try to limit access to adult websites, might be worth a try. To add a website to the list click the + button. To put some boundaries on my child’s web access I clicked on the Web tab and selected Allow access to only these websites. In my screenshot you’ll see that Safari is ticked, giving the child access to the entire web, warts and all. I used the controls in the next tab, Web, to rein that in. Again, I suggest you take the attitude that everything is off limits unless you have a reason for it not to be. Click the arrows to list the apps on your computer. Next, tick Limit Applications on this Mac. I ticked Send requests to and entered my email address so that I’ll be notified of any attempts to email sombody who isn’t on the allow list.Ĭlick the + button and add the names and email addresses of the contacts you’ll allow. To restrict who can exchange emails with your child tick Limit Mail to allowed contacts and click the Manage… button. I couldn’t think of a reason my children would need the camera or multiplayer games so I unticked Allow use of camera and Allow joining Game Center multiplayer games. The Apps tab lets you limit access to the computer’s camera, set restrictions on email and multiplayer games, and create an allow list of apps. There are six tabs in the parental controls pane: Apps, Web, Stores, Time, Privacy and Other. It’s easy to change the settings if later if you get something wrong.Īs you go through the controls, pay careful attention to the labels because you’ll be using ticks to indicate both positives and negatives – sometimes your tick means allow, at other times it might be disable or restrict. If I couldn’t immediately think of a sensible use case for allowing something, I switched it off.

Whatever your choices, I suggest you apply the principle of least privilege, giving your children the access they need, and no more. Parental controlsĭifferent families will require different settings so I’m going to take you through the very restrictive set that I used, as an example, but your mileage may vary. Highlight the child’s name in the left hand menu and click the Open Parental Controls… button. When you click Create user you’ll see that your child has been added to the list of users on the left, and that Enable parental controls is ticked.
#Parental control program for mac password
I suggest you enter a placeholder password at this point – you can help your child to change it later. When the new user dialog opens choose Managed with Parental Controls from the drop down and fill in the rest of your child’s details. To add an account, click on the + button. Under your name it should say Admin.īefore setting up parental controls we need to create an account for each child. On the left hand side is a list of users.
#Parental control program for mac mac
Log on to your Mac and go to System Preferences > Users & Groups. UsersĪs our starting point I will assume you have a working Mac on which you have Admin rights. What is important is that each of your children starts with their own clean slate: a user account that’s theirs and nobody else’s. I’m just letting you know what state my laptop was in when I wrote these steps.Īll you need is a working Mac that you’re happy for your kids to spend some time on. I do this whenever a computer changes hands, even in the same household, but it’s not a prerequisite for setting up parental controls. I reinstalled macOS over the internet on to an encrypted filesystem, went through the setup process until I had a working computer with one user account and installed Sophos Home. A clean slateīecause I was reusing an old laptop I decided to wipe it clean and start again.
#Parental control program for mac windows
Later this week we’ll walk you through a similar setup for a Windows machine so stay tuned for that. This article walks you through the things I did to secure the laptop, and details the parental controls and options I chose. The Mac would be no exception, there would be boundaries, so I enlisted its in-built parental controls to see what they could do, and how they could help. The kids have been at school for a few years and they’re are old enough to have a little independence, but most of what they do is supervised or subject to fairly restrictive boundaries.

I wanted to broaden their horizons a little: do a bit of coding a bit of web searching get them comfortable with a keyboard give them something valuable that they had to look after and get the ball rolling with developing some good computer security habits. We use laptops for school homework from time to time but my kids spend most of their screen time poking and swiping tablets. Over the summer I decided to give my kids an old Apple laptop to share.
