OS X El Capitan: Parental Controls NOT working

Here's what I have the problem on:

Mid-2015 Retina MacBook Pro, 16GB RAM dual graphics

Late 2009 21.5 inch iMac 8GB RAM

Late 2010 MacBook Pro 4GB RAM

Mid 2009 white a1181 MacBook 4GB RAM

Mid 2012 MacBook Air, 8GB RAM

When something like this happens in some machines and not others it is not always easy to pinpoint what is different. I don't have a mac mini or macbook air to test this. Did you ever try this on a clean install of El Capitan? In my experience almost all the "bugs" are actually software conflicts of some sort - if everything works well on a clean install of El Capitan then the task would be to figure what conjugation of software kext, drivers etc may be causing the problem.

You bet, I used parallels to fire up a new VM of OSX and replicated the issue on that. My only fix for it right now is to roll back to Yosimite.

I formatted all of our machines excluding my macbook air. I did not use time machine, and just downloaded the lastest install from the rescue partition.

Still have the issues, though the format did fix non related issues, LOL.

El Capitan is better than Yosemite in every way except for this. I also used Parallels to install VMs of El Capitan and Yosemite, and only the El Capitan VM has the issue. I upgraded to El Capitan back in September, so I can't revert to Yosemite because the backup would be so old. I do use Time Machine regularly though.

Here's what it looks like in a Yosemite virtual machine. That third radio button refuses to stay selected for me in El Capitan. Works fine in Yosemite.

Kimberly, as I related on pg. 2 I am having a similar issue in that Parental Controls does not function correctly in El Capitan. However, my issue is that Parental Controls blocks access to approved sites, even after Admin Password is entered. I too spent several hours on the phone with Apple Tech Support and at the end of the process, the only resolution was to roll back to Yosemite, so a few more hours were invested there. Disappointing doesn't begin to describe the last couple of years' worth of Apple "updates."

I erased the whole hard drive, did a 'clean install' and manually pulled over the files as directed by apple support. Fixed the saving parental control issues but not the web related issues.

Totally agree that El Capitan is a better OS, but the bugs are show-stoppers on our business machines.

I agree about El Capitan. The split view is great, and I personally was hit very hard by the Yosemite Wi-Fi problems in late 2014. (10.10.0) I just wish Apple would fix the settings. I'm still leaving feedback. (Formatting my HD again isn't an option.)

When I leave feedback, I include a link to this thread. Maybe some developers at Apple will look at it.

Just installed 10.11.3, still happening.

I was struggling with the same problem with parental controls today. I usually have the settings set on "try to block adult websites." I then customize and block many social media sites. I went to make an adjustment and it stopped filtering completely. Additionally, the time limits I set were no longer working.

Today I was working on it and the filter and time limits are back in place. This is what I did:

1. Change the managed account into an administrator. This requires going to users and accounts and checking the box that says "enable this account to administer the computer." With El Capitan the computer will say it needs to restart. Go ahead and click ok and restart.

2. Log in to the newly administrating account. Go back to users and accounts and change back this account to a managed account.

3. Go to parental controls. Click on the third selection: Allow access to only these websites. Lock it.

4. Log out and then log back in.

5. Try safari to see if it allows access to websites other than your bookmarks. It should block other websites.

6. Go to system preferences and parental controls and change the settings to what you want them to. Now it should be saving. Lock the parental controls.

Once I did all this I was able to put in my original settings again, blocking all adult sites and then customizing ones I wanted blocked. I had to re-enter all the custom sites again. The time limits had to be reset, but they are now working. If you want to check the time limits are working, click on the clock on the top right of the screen. It should give you a "bedtime" one minute before the time you entered.

Note: This is how I did it, but I am not sure 1 and 2 were necessary. You might want to try these steps with skipping 1-2 and see if it works.

After a bit, I've run into many of the same problems others are experiencing mention here. I am trying to set up restrictions on 24 desktop iMac's at a small school, just purchased in late Dec 2015. After 16+ frustrations hours of messing around with parental controls with 5 of them, I gave up on trying to set up parental controls. Each one I tried had various problems that have been mentioned on this thread. Not all 5 of the iMacs I was trying to setup parental controls are showing the identical problems on each, even though all are set up exact same way and exact identical same checkmarks. All iMac's are new right out of the box and I only installed Microsoft Office suite on them. Some examples of my problems: users with parental restrictions, Microsoft Word complains it doesn't have access on several computers, while others worked fine, but all have the checkmark to allow the use of MS Word. The strangest symptom was on 2 of the iMac's , as I added a single check mark to one line, another line & some times 2 other lines, in the current window got checkmarks added or removed. It was checkmarks for Apple items, not a Microsoft item, where it also changed an additional line item other than what I was clicking on. Thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but it happened several times, not always with the same checkmark line item. Sometimes also had a flicker in some of the characters in the small window, not necessarily the item I was clicking on. If I changed the same checkmark again it didn't repeat the same random changes just then. Was no pattern of when, or which item I changed, it didn't correlated with the checkmark when it randomly changed on others. And being it only shows a small window of checkmarks, when I scrolled up or down after adding or removing a checkmark, noticed sometimes that others that were not in the current window were occasionally getting changed from what I previously had set them to. I had a written list that I was comparing against so I wasn't just going from my memory. Problem is almost like something in the GUI window interface for the parental controls is incorrectly translating the change and/or is not reflecting the true setting. This is not good to say the least. Quickly losing my faith in Apple.

This issue has caused me so much pain for so long. I have a Mac Mini 2011 which I think came with Lion on it. I updated to mountain lion and at some point tried to set up parental controls only to find that they either just didn't work at all (failed to remember settings and allowed websites) or they had the hideous bug of repeatedly preventing any app from accessing a secure website (which they all do nowadays) meaning my kids couldn't use Minecraft or MS Office without restrictions popping up literally every few seconds. Completely unusable. The steps below were the 'recommended' solution to this a few years ago:

MacIsTheBest2016 wrote:

1. Change the managed account into an administrator. This requires going to users and accounts and checking the box that says "enable this account to administer the computer." With El Capitan the computer will say it needs to restart. Go ahead and click ok and restart.

2. Log in to the newly administrating account. Go back to users and accounts and change back this account to a managed account.

They didn't work for me. I upgraded to Yosemite in the hope that would fix things. It didn't, and rather than waste more of my life on it I just gave up and let my kids do what they wanted and tried to supervise as best I could.

I have now revisited the issue and just installed a fresh copy of El Capitan on a brand new hard drive with the hope that the problem was being caused by some long-standing "upgraded-rather-than-reinstalled" system issue. Unfortunately whilst El Capitan seems to be remembering websites that I allow (mostly, I have my suspicions though), it still forces me to manually accept every secure connection the computer tries to make. Why is this desirable behaviour? It's ridiculous!

everything worked perfectly until somehere in the middle of mavericks. then the duplicate icons started. that was the only issue until el capitan for me.

honestly, if i wanted to block websites i would do it from the router.

I have two brand new macbook air machines. I am experiencing the same issues on the brand new out of the box machine. whatever i set doesn't save. the times will save but not the apps i select. after trying this aforementioned technique, the apps saved but nothing else. also when i log out of what is to be my son's account, it switches everything again. i have had to erase my iMac and reinstall everything per apple support and that fixed everything but the website stuff. i have a call scheduled tomorrow and will update. it clearly isn't confusion of my files, as it is doing the same thing on a new machine (which i have not pulled any new files to)...arghhhhh