Adding Parental Controls

Introduction: In this video, we’re going to take a look at how we apply parental controls to a user account on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac. To use parental controls to any one of your users, what you first need to do is open up System Preferences, select it. Now, what I recommend doing is going over to Parental Controls. You can apply parental controls through Users and Groups, but I recommend doing it through Parental Controls. Why is that? Well, we can only apply parental controls to standard users. You cannot apply parental controls to an admin user. When I click on parental controls here, it only shows me my accounts to which I can apply parental controls. It’s not going to show me any admin accounts, but when I go back over to my Users and Groups, what I do is I see all of my accounts, so I could accidentally apply parental controls to an admin user. When I do that, what it does is it takes administrative rights away.

To apply parental controls to any user in the Users and Groups, you first go and unlock it, type in the password, and then go and select the user. Again, you want to make sure that they’re a standard user, and then you go over to Enable Parental Controls. When you select this and click on Open Parental Controls, what it does is, it opens up that parental controls preference pin.

Again, what I find easier to do is, or recommend what people do, is go over to Parental Controls. From there, you’re going to see all of your accounts that you can apply parental controls to. You’re not going to see all of your admin accounts. Now again, the first thing we need to do to apply parental controls is just going and unlock it, click on the lock, enter the password.

If you want to add a new user from this preference pane, you can add a new user. All you have to do is click on the plus here, and it’ll add another standard user. I click on it, type in the name, the account name, password, and then create user. I’m going to cancel here. Now, let’s see what options we have. I select Pepper here, and now what I need to do is I need to enable parental controls. I click on it, and now what I do is I set what parental controls I want. You’re going to see; we have various categories up at the top. I can set restrictions for apps, web, stores, time, privacy, and others.

With apps, what I can do is I can set, do I want to allow them to use the camera? Do I want them to join multiplayer game center games? I can also limit mail to approved contacts, so they’ll only be able to use mail from contacts that I supply, and I can limit applications on the Mac. If I don’t want them to open up a specific app, such as QuickBooks, I can go and add that app down here, and then they will not be able to open up that app.

Let’s go over to web. With web, what I’m able to do is set restrictions on websites. I can allow unrestricted, which means there’s going to be no parental controls. I can try to limit access to adult websites, and then I can access only specific websites. If you set, try to restrict access to adult websites, what you do is you click on customize, and then you can always allow specific websites and never allow other websites. I’m going to click on cancel again.

With stores, we can set to disable the iTunes Store, iTunes U, and Apple books. They won’t be able to make any purchases. I can also restrict it. I can limit music with explicit content, movies, TV shows, apps, and books with explicit content.

With time, what I’m able to do is set time limits on the computer. We have weekday time limits. All I have to do is set limit weekday use to, and then I can set for how long. Right now it’s set for three hours a day. Now, this is for the weekday. On weekends you may want to give them a little more time. You can set a separate time for weekends and select this, and you can see that default is set for five hours a day. On weekdays, they’re going to have access to the computer for three hours on weekends you’re going to have access to it for five hours. I also have bedtime. I can restrict access to the computer for specific times. Again, we have school nights, Sunday through Thursday, and then the weekends. We can set up separate times for school nights and weekends.

We have privacy. I select this, and I can set what apps have access to this user’s location or contacts. What this does is this does not restrict the user from using contacts, what it does is restrict other apps from using the context, calendars, or reminders. It’s not for the user; specifically, it’s for other apps.

Then our last option over here is other. When I select this, I can turn off Syrian dictation. I can disable the editing of printers and scanners as well as block CD and DVD burning. We also have restrict explicit language in the dictionary, prevent the doc from being modified. Once you set up the doc, they will no longer be able to modify it. Then we also have a simple finder. I seldom see this being used, but what it does is it simplifies the Finder app.

Down at the bottom, we have logs. Logs will always show no matter what tab we’re in. If I go back over to apps here, you’re going to see we still have logs. Or what is it? Well, I click on this, what I can do is I can set how long it’s going to keep the activity of this account. It’s set for three months by default. If I were to log into this account, I’d be able to see the logs for this account. I’d be able to see what they were doing. We have logs for applications as well as for web. When you are finished, you click on done, and you’re back to your parental controls.

Now let’s say you have multiple accounts, and you want to apply the same settings to all of your accounts. Well, you can do that by going down to the little gear here. Once you have all of your parental controls set up here for Pepper, all you do is select this, click on it, and then you can go and copy these settings. Once I copy them, I would go and select another user. Let’s go ahead and copy this, I’m going to copy it, select another user, the guest user, let’s say, and then what I can do is I can go and paste these settings to the guest user. You don’t have to go through all of the settings again for each user. You can copy and paste. Then this is also where we turn off parental controls for an account. If I no longer want to apply parental controls to this user, I would select turn off parental controls.

That’s how we apply parental controls to a user account on the Mac.