How To Set Up a Mac For a Child With Parental Controls

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to setup a Mac for use by your child with Parental Controls.

If you have a young child at home and you want to give them their own computer to be able to use but you still want to maintain some control over what they can and can't do you can do it by setting up an account for them on a Mac and then using Screen Time to set Parental Controls. 

So the basic steps are to enable Family Sharing for your Apple Account. Then this will allow you to create an Apple Account for your child that's linked to yours. Once you have that setup you can then control what that Apple Account has access to. Then you can setup a Mac for their use, whether it is a brand new Mac or maybe an old Mac that you're repurposing. You would want to set this Mac up with an Admin Account that is for you, even if you're never planning to use this Mac. Once you have that Admin account setup you would then setup a second account that's a Standard Account and you would link that standard account to your child's Apple Account. They can then login to that Mac only in their Standard Account and you can control what they can and can't do using Family Sharing in Screen Time. 

So in order to set this up you need to have Family Sharing turned On. In System Settings you want to go to your Apple Account here. If you haven't done this previously you need to go to Family and you need to setup a Family and then you can invite people like, perhaps, your spouse or older children to the Family Account. You can create a child account. When you do this you'll be asked to provide the child's name and birthday, and the birthday is very important because what that child has access to in iCloud is going to depend on how old they are. If you previously haven't setup a payment method with your Apple Account you're going to need to do it now. That will confirm that you are old enough to be able to have an account with a child account attached to it. 

Now you have to Agree with the Family Privacy Disclosure and other terms and conditions. Now here's where you can setup the iCloud.com email address for your child. Whether or not you use it for actual email you still need this to be able to have an Apple Account. This will be their login for that Apple Account. Make sure you have exactly what you want for this because, as it shows here, you can't change it. Now you need to setup a Password for this iCloud Account. It should be different than the one you use for your Mac Account and probably won't be needed by the child so you can set this up to be just something you know. Make sure it is a good, strong random password. Then you need to provide a phone number for a verification code to be sent to you so a two-factor authentication here. So make sure the number you want is chosen there or click, Use a different number, and put that number here. Then it will give you a code there to verify. 

Now it will ask you if you want You or other parent's in the family group to be notified and have to approve any purchases or downloads from The App Store, iTunes Store for music or Apple Books. Then you can turn on Location Sharing. Remember this is for the Apple Account so it will effect any other devices you setup including an iPhone. 

So now you've got it setup. You should see under Family here in System Settings you as the parent or organizer and the the child account here. It should show you their age. 

If you find these videos valuable consider joining the more than 2000 others that support MacMost through Patreon. You get exclusive content, course discounts, and more. You can read about it at macmost.com/patreon. 

Now it's time to make some decisions about what they are allowed to do and what they are not allowed to do. You can click here and you'll be presented with lots of controls. So, you can set age range for apps. So this will be important if an app needs to verify their age in order for them to have access to some content or functionality. Now you can go through the items here on the left. Under Asked to Buy this is where you can turn On or Off whether or not you have to be asked for approval for them to buy anything from The App Store, from iTunes and so on. Under Subscriptions this shows you any subscription you've shared with them. For instance, an Apple Music subscription. You also can see if you shared any purchases. Like for instance if you could buy apps on your Account and then share it with them. Then Location Sharing. So if you have enabled Location Sharing you can turn on Block Changes, so they can't turn it off. 

Now let's go here to Screen Time and then click Open MacMost Screen Time. Now remember I'm logged in as me on my Admin account. I haven't logged in as them yet. So, accessing this will allow me to change their screen time without actually even being in their account. I can actually be on my own Mac and this will affect them on their Mac. So here you can see the family member and you can choose. The same thing happens if, say, you were just in your System Settings here. You can go down to Screen Time and you've got You but you can also go down and change Screen Time settings for them. So let's do that here. I'll click continue. For Web Content I can limit what they have access to, Unrestricted, Limit To Adult Websites, which is going to be a general limitation, it's not going to be perfect but it is going to come off a list that Apple uses, or Only Allow Some Websites. So in other words turn off all websites except those I allow. 

Now apps here. There is the age restriction for which apps they use. So if an app has been setup in The App Store as being 13+ they wouldn't have access to it if it's set to 9+ here. The same thing for viewing movies and TV shows in the TV App, for book ratings in the Books App, or music podcasts and all of that. You can select safety for music, videos, music profiles. Let's continue through this and then go to Communication Safety. So you've got various things that you can setup here and here. We can set away time from the screen. When it starts and when it ends. We can set down time. So what you need to do is set a code here for Screen Time controls and so on. When you're done you can always go back to Screen Time and System Settings on your account or on your Mac and then set the family member here at the top to the child's account and then you can go through all of this and customize it.

So the first section here in Screen Time shows App & Website activity. So you can actually see what they've been doing on their Mac and other Apple devices. It's under Limit Usage where you can stop them from doing things. So, for instance, here under Down Time they won't be able to use things from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. Notice I have it set to block a down time. So I would have to approve whether or not the child can continue afterwards. So if they do need to finish a homework assignment and it's just past 10:00 I can approve it. 

Under App Limits this is where you can limit which apps they use. So I'll enter in the code here. You can Search for a specific app or use an entire category here and set the amount of time they have for that category. For instance, no time at all; zero minutes zero seconds. Then Done. Under Always Allowed you can set what is actually available during down time. So, for instance, during down time you can have only specific contacts, like yourself or other family members that they are allowed to still contact after down time and which apps are allowed. You can also go to Communication Limits and limit who they can use the standard apps to communicate with. This won't affect third party apps. So, for instance, if you allow them to use What's App to communicate with people there's no way you Mac really can know what is going on with What's App because that is not an Apple product.

There's also special section for Communication Safety which tries to detect somethings you may not want them to see when they are using Communication Apps and you can use this as a way to try to prevent that. Further under restrictions you've got Content & Privacy here so you can try to restrict other things by going through. 

Okay, so now you've got an Apple Account setup for your child and you've setup some things about what they can and can't access and for how long through your controls on your Mac. The next things you need to do is setup their Mac for them whether it is a new Mac or one that you've reset. You want to create the initial account that is your Admin Account. So you just setup the Mac like it is for you. Then once you have that setup with one account, that's the Admin Account, you need to then setup an account that's going to be for them. That's not going to be an Admin account but a Standard Account.

So in System Settings you're going to go down to Users & Groups. Once in here you should just see your Admin Account. I, of course, have some other accounts setup here. You'll probably just see that one. Now you're going to go and add User. Here you're going to be asked to provide Authentication by entering your password and this gives you the authority to setup a new account. Now the New User is going to be setup with a Standard Account, not an administrator account. Basically a Standard Account will allow it to be controlled by you, the Administrator of the Mac. For the name you should enter the full name of your child. Then for the Account Name you want it to be a short name. So, not maybe the full name here. Like, for instance, something like that. This will be used as the name of the Home Folder and the Account on that Mac. So, pick it carefully but keep it short. 

Next, setup a password here. Now you want to use a real password to teach your child good password management. It doesn't have to be long but it should be a random password, something that they need to memorize. It's okay to write it down for them as long as that piece of paper is kept in your home and nobody else really has access to it. Or to just be the person that reminds them of what their password is when they need to logon. Now create the User and you'll see it adding the account there. Now you'll see the Standard Account. You can click here and then add a Memoji or an emoji or keep it as a monogram or take a picture from the Mac's camera, anything you want to be able to have their little icon be different than yours so you can tell which one you're logging into easily.

Now, when they log into this account they won't be able to see any of your stuff. They won't be able to access your iCloud files, anything you've stored on the Mac, any of your passwords, any of your history. Nothing. They will only be able to see what's in their account which at this point is nothing yet. Now what you need to do is log out of your account and log into theirs to set it up. So you're going to go to the Apple Menu and then either log out here or if you like you can use Fast User Switching if you're familiar with that. Either way this will take you out of your account and then to the login screen where you're going to select their account and login with that new password you just created for that account. 

So when you first try to log into that new account you should be asked whether or not you want to attach an Apple ID to it. Then you would use the one you setup for your child. If you skip that you can always do it by going to the Apple Menu, going into System Settings, and then go to Sign-in with your Apple Account. So then you're going to enter in that new account you have created for your child and enter in the password you created for that account and then, remember that phone number you added for the two-factor authentication? You should get a code there. So you enter that in. Then give it a few minutes to finish setting up. 

Now you'll see in System Settings here that this Mac is setup with that child as the user using their Apple Account. So you can click on it here at the top. Then if you click on Family you'll see that they, indicated here by the U, is setup as the child that owns this account on the Mac. In the Family Group is the parent or organizer right here. 

Now in order to change settings of what they can or can't do they would need  to go down here to Screen Time. Then, for instance, if they wanted to go to, say, App Limits here and then change App Limits they would be asked for that Screen Time passcode that only you know. You, of course, don't have to log into their Mac Account or Account on an iPhone or iPad in order to change that. You can do it through your System Settings in Screen Time. 

Now if you switch back over to your account on this Mac you can go into Screen Time here and from here you can change to the child's account. You can go to App Limits and then you can add a limit here. You have to enter that code and then notice how it will recognize the apps you have installed on the Mac. So now you can say Restrict a specific app. So it is zero seconds and they won't be able to use that app. You can also go to Content & Privacy here and if you've got that turned On you can go to App Store Media, Web, & Games and this is where you can set it to Allowed Web Sites Only. So, now with that set they can access any website. So you go to Customize here and you can add websites that they are allowed to use, remove others, and control what they have access to on the web. But this is in Safari. So, if you have another web browser installed you're going to also have to go into App Limits here, add a limit, and then search for that browser here and restrict them from using that browser at all. 

Also, notice in App Limits if you go to Add Limit down at the bottom you've got websites. You can add a restriction for a specific website right here but that will only affect Safari. The useful thing here is that you can actually set a time limit on this so you can allow them to use a website but maybe only, say, for 30 minutes a day. 

So I hope this helps you setup a Mac for use by your child. You can do the same basic thing with a Mac that you regularly use by setting up a standard account for them and only letting them use it when logged into that standard account. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.