parental controls settings won't save

6 hours? Omg. Did you get paid for that?

But thanks for the effort. It makes clear that it's not just wrong usage, it rather confirms that it's broken. Hopefully. The support can escalate the fact and finally opens a Bug/Defect or whatever it's called at Apple. Not sure they even have a word for it. At least regression testing might not be in their vocabulary.

Same here, can't get any alteration to parental controls preferences to stick. That's especially annoying if you want to add or remove authorized sites... Doesn't work either if you try to modify that from a remote computer.

Easy to overlook, but if you don't 1st add the checkmark for "Limit Applications on the Mac" the will not stick. Without that "CHECKMARK", you can change the allowed application in the lower section all day long and they will not stick.

I was having this same issue until I realized there was a different type of user called "Managed With Parental Controls." When I created an account with that type of user selected rather than with "Standard" selected, all my Parental Controls settings stuck. After clicking the "+" icon to add a new user, select "Managed With Parental Controls" from the "New User:" dropdown, and this should fix the problem. Unfortunately, this setting cannot be changed once the user has been created.

I think you are talking about "Apps" tab. Here, people are talking about the issue with "Web" tab. In "Web" tab, no matter which one of the 3 options you select, radio button selection always defaults back to the middle one (see below screenshot).

I can't find any such option to select a type of user (standard/"managed with parental controls"). This is how "create new user" wizard looks like. Also, I couldn't delete my existing/primary account.

No, I was having the exact same issue on the Web tab

That looks like you're already creating that type of user, meaning you clicked the "+" from the Parental Controls screen rather than from the Users & Groups screen. Sorry my fix won't be your fix 😟

I tried from User & Groups. There is an option to select User Type. I will try this out. Thanks.

I am also unable to save changes to Parental Controls for the Managed Account I setup for my kids. I tried the methods suggested by the OP but with no success. I tried deleting the account and trashing the Managed Prefs folder and then recreating the account. Then I tried deleting the account with the Directory Editor Utility and trashing the Managed Prefs folder and then recreating the account.

I have a similar problem on my other MBP with Yosemite where many changes to Parental Control settings fail to save.

Nothing has worked and it is super frustrating.

I have spent the last hour or more performing a number of various steps and found the following to be the most predictable:

• Unlock the Users and Groups pane, then back out of the pane
• Enter and Unlock the Parental Controls pane
• Select the Managed User
• Select the Managed User. Make 1 or 2 Parental Control settings at a time, back out of the pane with the left arrow, then re-enter the Parental Controls pane, select the Managed User, and check to see if my change was saved. Then I would repeat precisely the same steps for 2 more changes. Usually my changes would save, but sometimes they would not (see below for the events that occurred when the changes would not save)
• Finally after all my settings were completed I backed out and locked the Parental Control pane.
• I re-entered the Parental Control pane and selected the Managed User to ensure the settings were saved.
• Finally I entered the Users and Groups pane and locked it.

This is what I discovered during the various steps I took:

• Intermittently, when making 1 or 2 changes, backing out and re-entering Parental Controls, I discovered that Parental Controls would suddenly be turned on for the Guest User with settings that matched the last changes made to the Managed User I was attempting to modify. When this occurred the settings I had just made to the Managed User were not saved. I then had to turn off Parental Controls for the Guest User, and re-enter Parental Controls for the Managed User and repeat the most recent 1 or 2 settings I had made.
• This is peculiar because I have always had Parental Controls turned off for the Guest User. If it had happened only once I would have thought it was me that made the mistake. However, it happened repeatedly during the above steps, which would indicate it is a OS X problem.
• Also, I learned that if I entered the Parental Controls pane via the Users and Groups pane that the settings I made were much less likely to be saved. I had to follow the steps above for the most predictable outcome.
• Interestingly, I found that when I turned on System Preferences for the Managed User in the Parental Controls pane that the results were highly unpredictable. It either wouldn't stay turned on, or the Guest User would suddenly have Parental Controls turned on. But most interesting of all was that when the System Preferences selection did finally save, the dock layout for the Managed User would be highly erratic. Twice, when I had selected Use Simple Finder selected, there appeared multiple copies of the App Shortcuts in the Applications Folder. Finally I unselected System Preferences for the Managed User.

I am hopeful that someone reads this that can assist in finding a patch for this problem with Parental Controls.

Regards

Many many people are reporting that the parental controls won't remember custom settings in El Capitan. I am fairly certain that the issue is that the default settings provided by the system are overwriting the settings that we are saving. Apple provides a default set of settings based on the age group one selects when setting up the user account. It seems to be these default settings that periodically replace the custom settings that were previously saved.

Since this has been going on for a while, I have to assume that it's not all that important to Apple. (hopefully the issue will be fixed in the next system update, but for parents that depend on parental controls, the inability to save custom settings makes the computer nearly unusable) Someone with a bit of programming skill might try to find the default settings in the system and edit the file (I assume there is a plist file out there somewhere with the default settings in it) so that the default settings would be the settings that one wants. That way, even if the system replaced the custom settings with the default ones, the default ones would be what one wanted.

I will see what I can find and test this out if indeed there is a default settings file on the system somewhere.

That would be great! Thanks for looking into it further.

I went through all these same things and noticed the same issues with saving and the dock, etc. Computer cant be used by my son until this gets fixed. come on APPLE

I gave up and installed NetNanny for Mac. Gives me the functionality I need, plus it works better so far with Google Drive than the Mac parental controls did. With NetNanny, it's possible to configure it to block all websites except for a whitelist, which is how I'm using it. 14-day free trial and so far, so good.