Screen Time and Parental Controls In macOS Catalina

A new feature in macOS Catalina is the ability to track and restrict your app usage. You can use Screen Time for yourself, to attempt to limit your use, or as parent controls on a standard account on your Mac. You can also limit individual websites.

Comments: 5 Responses to “Screen Time and Parental Controls In macOS Catalina”

    Michael
    5 years ago

    The Parental Controls in Catalina are extremely difficult to figure out and are NOT intuitive. Despite me restricting websites on my child's account on my desktop, I can still get to any site I want. Actually, I'm writing this comment from my child's account, despite not approving this website!

    Nel
    5 years ago

    Gee, the parental control was much better before. I could control my child’s account from my admin account. Now I have to get into their account and restrict it. And I can still get into to the website I am supposedly restrict it. WTF Apple?

    5 years ago

    Nel: It is a little more straightforward if you log into the account and then whatever you do applies to that account. Otherwise, you had to specify which account you wanted to restrict and then how. As for the website, are you using Safari or another browser? Which function were you using to restrict a site?

    DJP
    5 years ago

    We had the same problem with restricting websites. The problem is during the upgrade process, even though the "allowed websites" are transferred from the old "parent control" settings to the new "screen time" settings, Safari still allows all websites. We finally figured out how to fix it, but it resets all of the "screen time" settings. Simply turn "screen time" off and back on again. Next you will have to manually re-add all of the previously defined "allowed websites".

    Opie S. Teller.
    5 years ago

    I was afraid the Parental Control settings might not be transferred, but thank you for confirming what does transfer. I see it as a step up from Parental Controls, for which the case was "the more you use it, the more bugs it encounters." My family has had to allow many hundreds of websites. The fact that some websites won't be blocked and that those lists are cleared when Screen Time is deactivated and reactivated is reassuring that the multiple-gigabyte mess of untouchable space will be clean.

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