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Using Parental Controls In Mac OS X
Mar 13, 2025
A quick how to showing how to turn on parental controls in Mac OS X and what the settings do.
View Video Transcript
0:06
hey everyone today I'm going to show you
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how to watch what your kids are doing
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online specifically using parental
0:13
controls as well as just kind of monitor
0:15
uh what people would be doing on your
0:17
computer so it's actually fairly easy to
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set up now you can enable parental
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controls on the administrator account so
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if you only have one account on your
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computer you're not going to be able to
0:30
set parental controls on that computer
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alone so to start it up all you're going
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to have to do is go up to your app logo
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menu and click system preferences system
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preferences is going to open and you're
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going to click on the parental controls
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tab so now what you're going to see here
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is a list of all your accounts on your
0:54
computer that can have parental controls
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and what you're going to have to do in
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most cases is click the lock to make
1:00
changes so it's going to have you
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authenticate with your
1:04
password and then you're going to be
1:06
able to manage controls so I'm going to
1:09
click on my demo account that I made
1:10
here and all I have to do is Click
1:13
enable parental
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controls now from here you're going to
1:17
get a lot a lot of different options
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what that you can set for parental
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controls now if you have kids the
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biggest thing you're probably going to
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want to choose is use Simple finder and
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what simple finder does is it kind of
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strips down Mac OS 10 to its most basic
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form in order to better suited for
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younger or inexperienced users as it
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says so it's going to give them a little
1:44
less control over the system so you know
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they're not going to be able to mess it
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up as easy and you can also limit
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applications
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so let's say you don't want your kid
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accessing a Twitter application you can
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limit applications that you want them to
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use so I can click that
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and let's say apps that are 17 plus I
2:08
don't want them you know using I can do
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that so you can see down here allowed
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apps I have all the apps that I have
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installed so let's say I don't want them
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using Twitter now they're not using
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Twitter or other apps I have a lot of
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different apps in here and I could just
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click any of those and they wouldn't be
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using anymore so that's pretty much how
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it works uh very easy to work with and
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restrict what apps you want people
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using this is also useful if you have
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other people accessing your computer and
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you don't want them to have full access
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over everything that you have on your
2:49
computer you can also disallow users to
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modify the dock so that they can't take
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things out of the dock they can't put
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things in the dock things like that and
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what you you have in there is a set
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restricted set of applications and
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that's how it's going to be you can also
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click on logs here and you're going to
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be able to see applications that the
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user open things they did in I chat webs
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websites that are blocked and websites
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that are visited so you have a lot of
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different things if you see your kid on
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the computer you don't know what they're
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doing or something like that you can
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just go in look at the websites
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visited and you have all your logs here
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so you can set it up so activity for one
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week all Group by we can website and
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date so this is a way to manage all the
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logs that are on here so if you click on
3:40
the web tab you can limit access to
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adults websites automatically and you
3:45
can customize this from here so you can
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add websites to block and you know never
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allow certain websites or always allow
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certain websites so that's pretty nice
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under the people tab you can limit mail
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and I chat functions so if you don't
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want them them using mail let's say you
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don't really want them to have access to
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a mail account or chat with other people
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you can do that easily and you can also
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allow certain contacts so let's say you
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want them to be able to chat with maybe
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grandma or something like that but none
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on the other people so it's very easy to
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do that that way and you can also manage
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logs from there you can also have time
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time limits now this is very useful
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let's say if your child spends a lot of
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time on the computer and you want them
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to you know be off at a certain time in
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the night you can limit it to a certain
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amount of hours and then you can set it
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for the weekend let's say uh two more
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hours on the weekend something like that
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you can limit it for that too and then
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also you know for school nights it's
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very easily accessible Sunday through
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Thursday Friday and Saturday so you can
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prevent access so at that certain time
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let's say at 8:00 you want them off the
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computer it'll log them out at 8:00 and
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that'll be it so if you go into the
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other tab you can also do a lot of other
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things here hi High profanity in the
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dictionary so if you don't want them you
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know looking up inappropriate words you
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can click that you can limit them from
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you know changing up your printer
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settings so messing up your computer
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pretty much and also CD and DVD burning
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as well as changing their password so
5:16
that you're locked out of their account
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so you have a lot of different options
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in parental controls and it can make you
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a lot more you know give you a lot more
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peace at mind when you're using your Mac
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and letting kids use your Mac or even
5:30
other
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people so that's about all and it's very
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simple and if you want to get rid of
5:35
parental controls then you can just turn
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parental controls off and they're off so
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it's very easy to set up very easy to
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configure and it'll give you the piece
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at mind you might want so that's about
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all for this video I hope you found it
5:48
useful and thank you for
5:54
watching
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