Windows 10 Family Options
I was recently asked about Windows 10 and whether it has any built in parental controls that can be used instead of buying a paid product. I'm a huge fan and advocator for Qustudio (https://www.qustodio.com/) and have used it for a number of years to protect my kids online.
It comes with a price tag, not expensive but can get a little costly for a large number of devices:
But what happens if you want to enforce some parental controls but don't have the money for qustudio?
Meet Window Defender Family Options. This new feature was introduced in Windows 10 and is designed for personal use. (non-enterprise/business)
Access it via:
It allows you to:
- Limit websites they can visit using edge
- Limit Screen Time
- View weekly online activity reports
- Control purchases in the Windows Store
- Share family notes via OneNote
- Share Family Calendars and events
- Connect anywhere from Skype
- Share Office365 Home
- Find a lost device using the Device Locator
I know what your thinking, it sucks because it only works with edge, meaning if they run a portable browser or install others it will not apply! but you can prevent this :) by turning on Kiosk Mode - assigned access in Windows 10, a good guide is here: https://www.howtogeek.com/173562/how-to-easily-put-a-windows-pc-into-kiosk-mode-with-assigned-access/ or read on......
First, lets setup the family group. To do this, click on View Family Settings in family options and it will redirct you to the create family group page.
Note: The family members must be using Windows 10 or Android version 5.0 or later with the Microsoft Launcher app installed.
Choose create. If you have a Windows live account log in with it or create as required:
Now its time to send invites. Select kids or Adult and enter in a mobile or email. Note the mobile number only works with US and Canada currently, so utilise email.
They will be in a pending state like:
An email will arrive like this:
You can also log in as them if you know the creds, and accept the invitation for them.
Once Accepted you will see your members listed under Your Family:
As an adult member you will also get a notification via email of anyone joining the Family too.
You can now plan family events, add money, and create shared notes as well as implement screen time and content restrictions
Setup Content Restrictions and configure the age of the child(s).
Selecting "View allowed ratings" will show you what they can access. This is automatically populated based off age and can't be edited . Changing the age is the only way to let them access older material.
Enabling web browser inappropriate blocking will allow you to set a bunch of options. First up, If the kids are using Windows 10, no problems at all, it will lock out the other browsers automatically!
You can now define Always Allowed, Always blocked or Only allowed websites. Awesome. In my setup i'm blocking youtube and facebook.
Remember, to ensure all works as planned, your child will need to log into Windows 10 as their live account to their device (best), or login as a local account and add their account under Settings>Accounts
You should also enable location services while you are at it under Settings, so that you can read the location data:
Make sure you enable edge above.
Anyways, It works quite well, here we see when my child tried to access one of my blocked pages above, it denied the user.
It will also default google and all searches to safe search, which is great, which prevents access to offensive or harmful content, or non age appropriate content. This is automatically set via Edge.
Selecting Screen time in the portal allows you to set device limits for Windows 10, pretty self explanatory.
To get the weekly reports and view their usage, you need to go into Activity and Enable Activity Reporting:
Once enabled their usage will show up.
Just note, its not real time, so there may be a slight delay before you start to see data populate in here, its also a good idea to set the default search to bing to ensure all searches pop up too but it will grab google no probs. After a while you get all the info, note its showing US time in the screenshot below:
You can see all sites accessed, searches done, block and enable as necessary and see what your child has searched for. In this example my child searched for Tokyo and dog pictures, tokyo with google, dog pictures with bing.
After a while (and once they close the browser and or shutdown) you will start to see the screen time area populate.
The Spending Area allows you to add Money for use in the Microsoft Store and view their purchase history.
Back to the family portal portal again selecting Find your Child, does exactly that, it uses location services on the device to find the location. Again it will take some time to show up and is not as accurate as say qustudio but its not bad.
So as you have seen above, this is a very cost effective approach to putting in some restrictions to protect your children online without the price tag. Its not as full featured as say qustudio and nowhere near as powerful, but as a very basic product it does the job (so long as everything is setup correctly and its not changed on the device) Giving your child a standard account (non-admin) will enable you to prevent them from changing certain settings as well.
But hey its not all about screen time. Selecting plan family event from the top will bounce you into outlook online where you can add entries to the family calendar so everyone can see and be reminded of events (and sync to their devices obviously).
Similarly, when you select new notebook, it sets up a new Family Notebook that everyone can access, and it pre-creates common family tabs which is also pretty cool and creates some prebuilt pages.
Even if your family members will not be using the security controls, the Family Portal provides a very easy to use platform to share information and events with everybody and is worth checking out.
Till next time.