Parental controls

Family Sharing and Screen Time enable and manage your little-uns’ online adventures

The Parental Controls pane in System Preferences has now gone in macOS Catalina. Similar options are in the new Screen Time pane. Items above the dividing line provide statistics on your recent use; if you want this to reflect all your devices, click Options at the bottom and tick Share across devices. The options below the line let you set limits for yourself or whoever uses this account.

Previously, Parental Controls applied to a Mac user account. Screen Time attaches to an Apple ID instead. The intention is that you create a separate Apple ID for each of your kids, as well as their own user account, in Users & Groups, if they share a Mac. Just as in your user account, you’re logged in to your Apple ID in System Preferences > Apple ID > Overview, in each child’s user account they’ll be logged in to theirs. Ideally, all their Apple IDs will be enrolled in your Family Sharing group (see bit.ly/ mac351famshr).

Each to their own

You can then set up Screen Time for each of them. It’s easiest from iOS 13: go to Settings > Screen Time, scroll down to Family, tap a Family Sharing member, tap Turn On Screen Time and pick some options. This creates a Screen Time status screen for that user. The settings will apply wherever this Apple ID is used, including macOS (regardless of the Share Across Devices option, which sets whether Screen Time aggregates usage stats, not whether its settings sync).

So far, macOS lacks this feature, so to set up Screen Time for each child you’d need to log in as them: switch to the user account you’ve set up in System Prefs > Users & Groups for each child, log into their Apple ID (only necessary first time), then go to System Prefs > Screen

Time. In Options, set a Screen Time Passcode so they can’t change settings.