parental controls settings won't save

I read somewhere that OSX 10.11 (El Crapitan) now had self-healing of permissions autotragicly running in the background. Presumably this was to relieve users of the mundane experience of using the Disk Utility to Repair Permissions, a function that is now absent in the GUI. That all sounds very good apart from the fact that the mundane experience of using Repair Permissions is most likely far preferable to the self-heeding process that has replaced it. Instead of 1 hour a month running Repair Permissions, we can now spend countless hours of our time in futile desperation trying to set permissions when "uglyprocessd" (or whatever it may be called) intermittently comes along and merrily trashes your configuration. So if this is true, it will be a complete waste of time trying to set permissions because "uglyprocessd" is going to trash it sometime soon and drive you into an abyss of dispair.

This is probably more frustrating than "discoveryd" which was an amazing oversight that prevented millions of Macs from being able to NETWORK. OMG. Thankfully that got reverted back to "mdnsrespoder" that had been in use forever. Ye olde expression comes to mind "if it ain't broke please don't **** with it"

What's more is that all sorts of system processes that need to run in the background are also flying in the face of users with "Managed with Parental Controls", such that they are requested admin credentials to run the likes of "UniversalAccessd" or "id" and all manner of things most of us have never set eyes on before.

Madness !!!

Everyone here should go to https://bugreport.apple.com/ and do your best to enlighten Apple to what's up with your permissions.

*self-hindering

After 3 senior advisors and hours on chat, two reloads and god knows what else I've reverted back to Yosemite and now everything works. The way the last genius (and I use this term sarcastically) left if with me was "wait for an update". After two months of waiting, he stopped responding to me. I guess most people are ok with their kids being able to find **** whenever they feel like, and not enough use the controls to find the bugs. I've referenced this forum, after which I was told that "it is not taken into consideration as it is not monitored by Apple". Meaning everyone on here is just wasting their breath if they think Apple is listening. Bye bye el Capitan.

I had this same problem, and what worked for me is to turn off parental controls on the affected managed account, quit preferences, go back in, and turn it on again for that account.

This thread has been running a year+ now and there is still no resolution. I have been pulling my hair out with the El Capitan Parental Controls. Examples of how this does NOT work:

1.) Set simple finder with specific apps that the user can run.... Log into user account and find NO app folder in the simple finder. Nothing. Just a finder icon at the bottom. Or...sometimes get an app folder with numerous duplicates of apps that were granted access. Or, even worse, sometimes you try to launch an app that was given permission and it says permission denied!

2.) Set specific web sites to access. Log back into parental controls and the setting is back to all web sites (middle option)

This is completely unacceptable as a feature and it's clear Apple doesn't give it enough attention. They should just as well remove the feature all together in the next OS update unless they get it fully working as intended. I guess I'll be going to Net Nanny.

Had the same problem.

The way to solve it is to delete temporary files - I needed help to do this.

Called Apple and they talked me through deleting a series of temporary files. Tried all of the sequences and combinations to see the settings and eventually had to call them.

This solved the problem.

Thanks DeeeMmmm. Can you please tell us exactly what temporary files they had you delete?

HI Dan,

Sorry I don't recall. There were about 15 folders of files with hard-to-remember names. Apple support talked me through it Without charge.

Good luck.

I have been having the same issue for a year now. Tonight after spending so much time trying to save changes, I broke the keyboard by slamming it so hard. Apple has become such a piece of crap company. Without parental control, I decided that I can't let my son to use this shiny mac anymore.

I hope this helps.

I think I finally got it to work. Here is what I did.

Created a managed profile, in that profile I opened or tried to open every app that I wanted the user to use or be blocked from. went back to the admin and changed one app. locked the parental control, "switch" to the managed account and tried using the app. the change had saved. logged out of the managed profile and back to the admin and repeated the action one app at the time.

All the changes saved. all the changes initiated straight from the parental screen not from the users screen. and when I logged in to the managed profile. I used the switch user feature not logging out of the admin acc.

I'm having the same issues and it is very frustrating. I particularly have a child who goes into system preferences and changes settings so they can get onto the computer in the middle to night without us parents "butting" in. It's at the point where I have to lock down ALL devices (mac and IOS) overnight so this doesn't happen and I have a cranky kid the next morning due to lack of sleep. Other programs focus on blocking internet and other internet usage. But, I'm looking for a program that'll block the kids from using programs on the mac (since parental controls that comes with OS X seems to be a waste of time) such as system preferences. Anyone know of a something I can use that'll block apps/programs as well as filter out websites and still have time limits too?

As a technology fan, I can relate to the frustration of something clearly having bugs that prevent it from being used as it was designed for.

As a parent, though, I am more than a bit saddened by the notion that it is like a tech war between parents and children.

I never had to even learn to use this feature of the OS, and my children (now young adults) have grown up with macs in their house, and used them from a very young age on. Never once I have lost sleep trying to block anything. Try talking to them, setting clear rules. "Trust but verify" is a very good lemma. Also, try Sierra if you absolutely need to use parental controls. I hear that most of the bugs were fixed for this release. I did not try to confirm it. You may want to verify...

+1 PlanckLimit I just tried updating to Sierra and all the bugs are still there. Apple doesn't seem to care at all about parents. On top of OSX parental controls being completely broken for years now, they still haven't introduced anything at all for iOS and even make it difficult for third party developers who try to fill the gap. Microsoft has parental controls that just work from day 1 on Xbox and Windows.

After struggling for a long time with parental controls that didn't work, I was only able to solve it by deleting the managed accounts and creating new ones. Parental controls worked fine with the new accounts.

This worked for me:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/220067/cannot-save-changes-made-to-par ental-controls-profile/228312#228312?new…