New Screen Time Preferences

In this video, we’re going to take a look at Screen Time with macOS Catalina. Let’s go to my Mac. You may be familiar with Screen Time on the iPad and the iPhone. With Screen Time, we’re able to see how long we’ve been in an app. We can also add limits to our apps as well as restrictions. We can do the same thing on the Mac now with Screen Time. This replaces parental controls. We no longer have parental controls with macOS Catalina we have Screen Time.

Where do we find this? In our system preferences. I’m going to go up to the Apple menu, and then we’re going to go over to System Preferences. From here, what I need to do is I need to go to Screen Time. Click on it, and now I’m looking at my Screen Time. Over on the left, we have different categories. I can see my app usage, which apps I’ve been using, and how long I’ve been using them. Notifications, I also have pickups. I also have downtime app limits, always allowed and content and privacy. These are restrictions. What I can do is I can restrict the usage of an app. I can set an app that has always allowed. I can limit my content and privacy.

Let’s take a look at a few of these. We’re going to go back up to app usage. So far today, I’ve been using my Mac for 24 minutes. I just started recording. If I wanted to check my app usage on another day, I go up to the upper right-hand corner and click on the left arrow. I want to see it by week, I go over to the date here, and I can change it to this week. I want to see which apps I’ve been using, I go down towards the bottom, and you can see which apps you’ve been using. I swipe up, and we can see how long we’ve used each one of the apps.

There’s a little catch here. This app usage will count the usage of an app when that app is open. It doesn’t necessarily have to be active, or in the front, it just has to be open. On the iPad and the iPhone, the app usage is only counted when you have that app open; you’re actively using it. If it’s in the background, it does not count as being used. While on the Mac, it works a little bit differently. All you have to do is have that app open, and it will be counted.

Right now, I have OmniFocus open. I’m not using it. It’s just in the background, it’s hidden, but if we look here, you’re going to see it as being counted as being open or used. This does not necessarily mean that I have spent 26 minutes using OmniFocus. It just means that it has been open for 26 minutes. It works a little bit different than the iOS versions of Screen Time.

Let’s take a look at notifications. With notifications, what I can do is I can see how many times I’ve been notified, how often I get notifications through the notification center. I also have pickups. Pickups will show you how many times you’ve picked up your iOS device, not your computer. You can tie Screen Time in with your other devices by using iCloud. I’ll talk about that later on in the lesson. Pickups do not necessarily have anything to do with your Mac, but you can see how many times you picked up your iOS devices.

We have downtime. When I turn on downtime, only apps that I allow will be available. So which apps are going to be allowed when I’m in downtime? I go over to always allowed, and I can set which apps I want to be able to use when I’m in downtime. I also have app limits. This will let me say how much time I can spend on a specific app. All I do is click on the plus, select the app, or the category of apps that I want to add a limit to, and let’s go with games here, and then I set how long I want to be able to use them. We’re just going to go with one hour. I click on done, and now I can only play games for one hour a day. With app limits, we can still use the app; it limits how long we can use them.

We also have content and privacy. With content and privacy, I can go and add restrictions. When I turn this on, I’m able to limit adult websites, explicit language, and multiplayer games in the game center. When we go to options here, what I’m able to do is I’m able to share this across all my devices. If I have an iPad and an iPhone with the same iCloud account, when I set up my Screen Time options here, that’ll carry over to my iPad and my iPhone as well. If you want to be able to override those limits with a passcode, you select use Screen Time passcode, and you can override those.

If you set this up for someone on their device and want to have it overridden, you can enter a passcode to override it. That’s how you can use this for parental controls.

That is the new Screen Time on the Mac. It replaces parental controls, and it allows us to see how long an app has been open. Again, not necessarily how much we’ve used it, but how long it has been open. It can downtime app limits, always allow certain apps even during downtime, and then set up content and privacy restrictions. If you have multiple devices, you can share your settings across all those different devices.

That’s the new Screen Time in macOS Catalina.