Remote control on MacBook Pro parental controls

[greg9840]

Hello,
I bought a MacBook Pro for my 12 year-old and I'm hating the parental controls. I've been using Chromebooks for the last couple of years and the Google Family Link parental controls are awesome, mainly because I can control everything from an app on my Android phone and my wife can control it from an app on her iPhone. For the MacBook Pro, it seems the only way we can change the settings is to log into the MacBook itself. This is a huge hassle, especially if I'm not home. We like to use the whitelist feature when he's doing homework so he can only access websites we specify, and can't get distracted by non-school-related websites. But being able to control all the settings and whitelist from my Android phone is critical so I can add/approve websites from anywhere, even when we are in different places. I've tried third party parental control apps and so far none have worked because either they don't have a whitelist feature or they block some school web pages even though they are white-listed (due to other domains being called in iframes or other issues). Is there anything comprable to Google Family Link for MacBook Pro so my wife and I can change settings and approve websites remotely (when we are not home)?
Thanks!

 

[Howard2k]

I don't think you'll find a perfect technical solution. Probably nothing close actually. macOS does allow remote administration of parental controls from another Mac, so you could, from anywhere where you have Internet access, create a remote VNC session back to a Mac at your home and then make those changes from your Mac remotely in that way. There are iOS and Android VNC clients out there.


EDIT: This of course relies on the fact that you have a Mac. Which maybe you don't. If that's the case then you can VNC into your child's Mac, not ideal, or you can look at off-Mac controls like Pi Hole. That would be easy to remotely administer. Maybe even remotely administer the application of rule-sets on your home router/firewall remotely. These come with their own risks, but they're options.

 

[greg9840]

Hi, you're talking about remote desktop software like TeamViewer, GotomyPC, etc. right? I guess that could work, although still a very big pain because the amount of steps involved is fairly extensive. It will probably take at least 2 or 3 minutes to, for example, add a website to the whitelist. With Google Family Link, I receive a notification when my child requests a website be whitelisted, and I just tap "Yes". It's such a shame that Apple doesn't have something comparable. I find is kind of shocking that they don't. Why don't they ?!? If I would have known, I would not have bought the MacBook in the first place. Live and learn!

 

[Howard2k]

Yep - VNC is something like TeamViewer or GoToMyPC. Similar thing. VNC is free though.

I suspect there just aren't that many parents in your situation.

* You bought them a Mac, but you don't have one.
* You are requiring highly granular control over where they go on their Mac, which you can administer from a non-Mac.


Apple has been working on parent controls in iOS so I'm sure they will turn their attention to MacOS too, but I wouldn't anticipate it being "soon". I suspect the most likely scenario would be some sort of crossover between iOS and macOS parental controls. Inevitable I'm sure, but who knows when.

 

[greg9840]

Hi, it's true that my wife and I don't use Macs, but even if we did, we don't, for example, have our laptops with us when we go out to dinner and leave our son with his grandparents or a baby sitter. I would think that is true of most Mac owners - that they often don't have their laptops with them. The iOS controls are great, and my wife uses those on her iPhone to control my kids' iPhones and provide very granular control. I'm really hoping that Apple does the same for MacBook soon. Thanks!

 

[rcianpandacian]

google parental controls are absolute garbage. Any child just grabs a android phone does the factory reset and voila the child just bypassed the parental controls.

 

[greg9840]

My kids know that if they attempt to completely remove any parental controls I will take the device away for many months as a punishment. One third-party parental control app, Mobicip, seemed promising for MacBook, and it has a whitelist feature, but it blocks my daughter's online school videos. Is anyone aware of a third-party parental control app for MacBook with a whitelist feature that is not glitchy and doesn't block whitelisted content?

 

[greg9840]

Great news! Screen Time for MacBook comes with the new Catalina release. I just installed it. I'm wondering about something - if my daughter logs out of her MacBook (logs out of iCloud sync), will the Screen Time parental controls still work? Screen Time seems to work through the iCloud login/Apple ID).

 

[xraydoc]

Great news! Screen Time for MacBook comes with the new Catalina release. I just installed it. I'm wondering about something - if my daughter logs out of her MacBook (logs out of iCloud sync), will the Screen Time parental controls still work? Screen Time seems to work through the iCloud login/Apple ID).

I think you can set a feature that requires an admin password for any system setting. Haven't tried it but it might prevent her from logging out of her iCloud account in attempt to circumvent any limits you set.

Edit: System Preferences/Privacy & Security/General/Advanced (bottom right corner)/enable require admin password for system-level preferences

Edit 2: Might not do what you want, actually. But you can I think restrict access to the System Preferences app though the old, pre-Catalina user access controls.

 

[greg9840]

I think you can set a feature that requires an admin password for any system setting. Haven't tried it but it might prevent her from logging out of her iCloud account in attempt to circumvent any limits you set.

That sounds great. Any idea how I can set that up?

 

[xraydoc]

That sounds great. Any idea how I can set that up?

See my edits above...