When you click on the “Logs…” button, which can be accessed from any tab in Parental Controls, you can view what websites have been visited, websites that have been blocked (either explicitly or through OS X’s filters), applications that have been accessed, and Messages activity.You can sort activity from that current day, the past week, month, three months, six months, year, or since the beginning of time (All). It still behooves you to check the logs, which can be accessed by clicking the “Logs…” button at the bottom of any Parental Controls tab. That is basically it for the parental controls in OS X, however, it’s not the end of your role.
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You can also hide profane words in the Dictionary and disable password changes. Of note, there’s the option to disable the built-in camera, which is often a concern to many parents. There’s quite a few very useful checkboxes here. If your kids have a curfew, then you can turn on the Bedtime feature, which will lock users out of the computer for a chosen duration, this feature includes separate choices for school nights (Sunday to Thursday) and weekends (Friday and Saturday).įinally, there’s the Other tab. This is pretty basic, you can’t set when they use the computer, rather just the amount of time (from 30 minutes to 8 hours). If you want to limit computer use on weekdays or weekends, you can decide how long. The Time Limits options should be pretty familiar to anyone who’s used parental controls in another operating system. For example, if you want to limit to whom your kids can email, you “Limit Mail to allowed contacts.” Similarly, you can limit Messages to allowed contacts as well. There are also limits to how restricted users can use Messages and Mail. You can allow or disallow your kids from joining multiplayer games or adding Game Center friends. The People tab concerns itself primarily with the Game Center and allowed contacts. Otherwise, the user will have to go elsewhere. You can use your powerful administrator powers to step in and add the website, if you decide at that point it’s okay. If a young user comes across a website that’s blocked, they’ll see a message like this. If you decide you need to remove a website from a list, select it and click the “-” button.
Note, with the second option, you can blacklist and whitelist addresses, so as you can see in the following example, you can always or never allow websites by simply clicking the “+” at the bottom. If you click the “Web” tab, you can implement website restrictions, which consist of absolute unrestricted access to all of the Internet’s wonders, attempt to limit adult websites automatically, or you can allow access to specific websites that you choose.
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This is a good option for young users who might accidentally delete a shortcut to their favorite game or application and not know how to get it back. Once set, you can turn this option on and the user will not be able to make any further changes to the Dock. Selecting “Prevent the Dock from being modified” will lock the Dock with the apps and shortcuts you choose. If you allow apps store apps, you can decide the age rating, from All to up to ages 4+ to 17+. When selected, you can choose from four categories: App Store, Other Apps, Widgets, and Utilities. Limiting applications is fairly straightforward. For example, the Applications folder view has been grouped into pages and apps are actually aliases, meaning young ones have no access to the actual application files. It’s mostly intended for young or experienced users. The Simple Finder, as we see in the following screenshot, is a really stripped down version of the basic OS X desktop.
And again, if you stay on top of things by monitoring the logs (we’ll talk more about those in a bit), then you can react to issues before they actually become problems.įrom the outset, you can restrict users to what applications they use as well as whether or not they use the Simple Finder. As usual, if you add OpenDNS as a web filtering solution, you can probably feel pretty good about the steps you’ve taken. After giving OS X’s parental controls a spin, we can safely say that it’s got almost everything you could ever need to keep your kids out of most trouble. We’ve shown you how to exploit features found in your wireless router for the most rudimentary parental controls, as well as how to add OpenDNS to the mix for more powerful web filtering.
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We’ve covered the native controls found in Windows 7 as well as the full Family Safety package that comes with Windows 8.1. Busy parents get to breathe a bit easier, and as long as they stay on top of things, even basic parental controls such as those found in OS X, should be more than adequate.ĭiscussing parental controls on How-to Geek is nothing new. Parental controls are great once you set them up and use them.
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