parental controls settings won't save

Same here. Bought a new Mac, will call tech support about that.

:-(

So I have had these same issues with settings not saving, apps not working despite being allowed. I was on the apple support for 6 hours one day, 4 the next. reinstalling OS and eventually erased whole hard drive and manually brought back files. This fixed a lot of the saving setting issues and got the apps that weren't working despite being enabled to work. I was having to enter my admin password every time my son tried to open the already enabled apps. Well now there is another issue: websites I have repeatedly allowed come up as not allowed by parental controls. So much time and effort on this mess. I am dealing with a senior advisor who sends to engineering and gets back with me to keep working on it. They say they have no record of this being an issue. Please call in to support and get help as it may help you. If after some simple trouble shooting and plist file deletions don't work, ask for a senior advisor straight away. Apple needs to hear us and get this fixed

My how things have changed. I also use a PC for work, running Windows 10. Just the other day an update caused a problem. Numbers of users reported the problem in the Windows 10 community forum and a Microsoft techie was monitoring the forum. He jumped in and within a few days the problem was fixed and included in the next Windows update.

I remember the days when Microsoft was the behemoth that never listened to users. Now it seems Apple has taken that crown.

This might be helpful . . .

I had setup parentally controlled user accounts for my son and daughter. I was able to modify the browser restrictions to "allow" for my daughter's account which "stuck." However, the setting for my son's account kept reverting to "try to limit . . ." Previous suggestions didn't work for me. However, I copied the settings from my daughter's account via the gear icon in Parental Controls and "pasted" the settings to my son's account. Voila! The browser settings for my son's account "stuck."

One could, hypothetically, create a new user account to see if the settings "stuck." If they did, it would be an easy try to copy the settings over to the target account.

Come on Apple! Let's get a real solution???

More notes about this issue...

I have noticed that bizarrely the parental controls copies the favorites saved in Safari for the managed account into the list of approved web sites. Equally bizarre, if one adds a web site to the approved list, that web site is added to the favorites. So any web site that is approved for a managed account is added both to the list in the parental controls and to Safari.

The reason this is bizarre is because many web site that the managed account needs approval to reach are NOT user sites. Example, I had to add a Google site for background software updates. While it needs to be in the list in parental controls, it definitely should not be in the list of Safari favorites.

Another major flaw in this parental controls subsystem, the parental controls may have added the Safari favorites to the list of acceptable web sites WITHOUT AUTHENTICATION.

Truthfully, it is impossible to tell if the above statement is true because of the way parental controls works. It is not possible to see what the current settings are without logging into parental controls. Since one must log into the controls (i.e. one must give the computer permission to change the settings) in order to simply see the settings, one cannot determine exactly when the settings are being changed. But I can say this for sure, if a web site is added to the Safari favorites, it immediately shows up in the list of approved web sites when one logs into parental settings. That is a major security flaw. Just because a web site is added to favorites DOES NOT MEAN that it is an approved web site that can be accessed all the time. Smart pre-teens would soon find that they could approve their own sites just by adding them to the favorites list in Safari and then waiting for mom or dad to sign into parental controls. So anyone managing the parental controls would need to be diligent to search the list of approved sites to be aware of (and properly approve of) any that were added automatically.

I have spent over 20 hours now on this. the settings do not save consistently. if you access parental controls through users and accounts it saves app settings sometimes. i have selected allow only these websites and all are allowed. i have deleted users and made new users. erased hard drive on iMac, bought 2 new macbook airs and didn't restore or install from back ups for any of these and it still does it. sooooooo frustrating. son is homeschooled and computer is not functional for him. please post any updates you hear about. this problem isn't even on their radar. not enough people with the problem. have been working with technical advisor and engineering, no solution-- yet....

NetNanny is the solution until Apple gets this fixed. There's a 14-day free trial and there are some coupons around the web for purchase as well. I recommend turning off the Mac parental controls before installing as the interaction of the two seemed to cause a few issues for me (although I was able to restore the 'time out' feature of the Mac controls afterward without a problem). I'm not affiliated in any way with NetNanny, but they were helpful via email support and I was pleased to find a solution that allowed me to 'white list only' my son's web usage, so he doesn't surf around during homework time (other software mostly emphasizes blacklists or prohibited categories only).

does it let you block apps in the user as well?

I don't think NetNanny can block apps in the user. But as I mentioned, I was able to re-enable the time-out functions in the Mac parental controls after installing, so maybe you can re-enable the app-blocking functions as well. It was the Mac website blocking that wasn't working for me until I installed the NetNanny overlay.

And to continue with more notes...

I have been working to find an alternative to using Apple's broken parental controls. The third party software I have tried so far:

Qustodio

NetOrbit

ContentBarrier (by Intego Software)

What is very odd indeed is that NONE of them work at all. I find that very hard to understand. Every company providing monitoring and control software for the Mac can't be scamming all their customers. More likely, there is something that is changed in El Capitan that is causing this issue. I would not be surprised that the monitoring software does not work properly due to a combination of El Capitan, a managed account, and Apple's method of starting out a managed account with "default" settings (and automatically making unauthorized changes to the managed account -- see my previous post).

Of the three I thought that ContentBarrier worked in a way closest to what I was looking for, so I have been working with them for three weeks to see if we could get their software to work the way it is suppose to work. Unfortunately, no success yet. At this point, I think I will have to give NetNanny a try.

i too tried intego and could not get it to work and their support is awful. they have limited hours and it is all via email. i was on with apple another 3 hours today and the senior advisor took logs of what was going on. the settings consistently unchecked themselves when logging out of the user and restarting the computer. the apple people are sending it to engineering and we will see what they say. my senior advisor seemed to think the problem is coming from script conflicts

I don't think this is necessarily limited to El Capitan. For me it didn't work in Mavericks either.

update from my senior advisor today: i have stated this before but when i first called apple support on this issue the senior told me there was no record of this problem and how they track and watch ........ after about 20 hours on the phone at separate times and two brand new out of box macbook air machines doing the same things, i got a call back today. With my last advisor we took quick time video of what was happening, ran tracers and captured logs of what was happening as well. The apple senior advisor stated that engineering is now aware of the problem and is working on it! whiptdy doc right? To me that is huge, at least they are acknowledging there is an issue. I also sent links to these discussion forums as well. My advisor seems to think it is a 'script' conflict issue but too complex for him.

'Engineering' advised him to tell me to do this: (it is a compilation of various things people have suggested)

0.5) make sure you are logged out of the user you want to make setting changes on

1) Open System Preferences

2)Users/Accounts

3)Open parental controls (don't go directly to parental controls thru pref)

4)Change one tab at a time (apps, web, stores, time, privacy, other)

5)After making desired changes, hit the lock button then hit the back arrow to take you back to users then back to the sys pref main box

6)Wait 15 sec (I didn't have luck with that brief, I had to wait about 1 minute)

7) repeat the process FOR EVERY TAB YOU WANT TO CHANGE

So this worked for me for everything except the sub-menu (or whatever it's called)in the APPS tab. I want to allow only specific apps and disallow others. It is still randomly checking and unchecking my selections. It did 'stick' one time but reverted once I logged in and out of the managed user and/or restarted the computer. ARGGGGH. All the other settings are holding. It took me about 1.5 hours to do this, on one machine. Awesome, i know. I will keep trying to get the apps to 'stick'. problem is when i get it the way i want, if or when i make a change, it starts again.

Of note, for the web, I want to "allow only these". the ones i allowed are working (for now). My son did have trouble while logged in today and it started blocking sites he had just been on. It actually began blocking every site, like nothing was allowed. A restart resolved this.

So , it's not your machine, we probably knew that already. You aren't going crazy, they ARE checking and unchecking themselves. Hope an update will fix it soon, although have been reading this goes way back. I wonder if they acknowledged the issue back then however?

Please update as you are aware.

I can't believe that Apple has not resolved this issue yet. Such poor software design, and apparently without any quality control whatsoever - Apple needs to get their act together and make some serious personnel changes in the "parental controls" software team! I am truly disappointed, having changed my whole digital life over to Apple about 8 years ago because I was fed up with Microsoft bloatware and the never-ending Windows update craziness. Has Apple become the new Microsoft, pushing updates out before they are thoroughly tested? Maybe it's time to give the new Windows a second look...

http://www.macworld.com/article/1136387/troubleshootparental.html

gonna have go at this. anyone??😟