OS X El Capitan: Parental Controls NOT working

Kimberly,

Yes, I actually have. It seems that even if I get it to "stay," it still doesn't take effect.

For example:

Set the web filter to "allow list only"

Remove all the items from the allow list except for apple.com

Go to google.com (restart the mac, lock the padlock, whatever...)

it will allow google anyway!

Same for any website. Any situation. Any computer.

Obviously, it's just broken. Maybe some people have found temporary workarounds, but not me...

another stumble W4RH34D forgot to list is that El Capitan broke some Firewire peripherals (viz, Firewire Scanners).

Kimberly254,

The stepwise process you outlined worked for me when I followed it exactly.

Thanks for sharing.

Kimberly254, are you using simple finder as well? Please let me know if you experience any of the following: duplicate applications, missing icons, missing application folder icon, duplicate applications with missing icons.

I'm sorry im not nor have i ever tried simple finder so i cant offer anything iin regard to that😐

It does not work if you do it as a guest!!!!!! You have to set up a new user and make sure that the new user has Parental Control. If you do it this way it will work just fine. I have no idea why the 'Guest' always goes back to the default, it is a glitch and it seems Apple Care have no idea either so creating a new user is there current work around.

Creating a new parent managed account seems to work, but it's a mess if you wish to add control to an existing account.

We want to limit time to animaljam.com, yet AnimalJam doesn't have a time limit setting under their Parental Dashboard. So we set up a new account named Play with a time allotment and allowed all access, including anialjam.com.

We want to leave the existing account, with a separate time allotment for school work, etc., yet limit any access to animal jamb.com. For Firefox, I locked it down with an extension. For Safari, well I was able to lock out use of the Safari app. (Weird. Can limit the app, but not web site.) So, we're functional, for now.

After restart and Log Out/in, we'll see.

I may resort to creating another managed account, and migrating everything (bookmarks, saved passwords, documents) over to the additional new managed account.

You all are wasting time keeping complaining here, Apple doesn't read this forum. To get parental control fixed in 10.11 you'll have to file a bug with Apple development and keep following up on it until it's fixed. The same has happened with 10.10 - when it was released parental controls were broken. I filed a bug and kept following up on it until they finally got it fixed in 10.10.3 beta. Got to https://bugreport.apple.com/ to file bug ticket with detailed instructions on how to replicate the issue. Keep updating your ticket asking for progress status. If/When Apple gets a few tickets like this, then they would consider it to be a real problem that needs to be addressed. Might take a couple of months, but they will fix it.

-albertr

If I had time for that I would do that. I would actually pay someone to get it done, LOL. Who has some spare time? Set up a paypal page. Let's get this handled.

All it takes is about 5 to 10 minutes (depending on your typing speed) to file a bug report with Apple and maybe a couple of minutes per week to keep following up on it. Hardly any burden.

-albertr

I have emailed them directly. Left feedback. Everything. I'm still CONSTANTLY leaving feedback. For months. They just don't feel like fixing it I guess. But if I got $1 to my PayPal account every time I leave feedback, I'd probably have $100.

Ok. I just did it with my developer account.

LukeLindblom wrote:

I have emailed them directly. Left feedback. Everything. I'm still CONSTANTLY leaving feedback. For months. They just don't feel like fixing it I guess. But if I got $1 to my PayPal account every time I leave feedback, I'd probably have $100.

You don't know how many people have left feedback about it. Let's say for argument's sake, 10 people have left feedback about this. Is Apple, a company with hundreds of millions of customers worldwide, going to spend time fixing an issue 10 people have? Probably not. Constantly leaving feedback, essentially spamming them with complaints, isn't going to make them act any faster, if they act at all.

Same experience here. I have a laptop needs to be limited for students to use it in school. IF I use parental controls, a logout or reboot destabilizes the system taking it to the most restrictive, unusable parental controls. The 'switch and wait' sequence above is what I did on my own...to disable parental controls. THAT works. The controls themselves, which have worked for multiple releases, broke in El Capitan.

I HAVE A SOLUTION.

1. Log out of all managed accounts and log in to an admin account.
2. In System Preferences -> Accounts, select the managed account (e.g. the user "foo"), and press the "-" button at the bottom.
3. Select "Don't change the home folder" and then click "Delete user".
4. Re-create the user in System Preferences -> Accounts.
5. Go to System Preferences -> Parental Controls and reconfigure the desired settings.
6. Navigate with Finder to the /Users folder. You will find a "foo" folder, and a "foo (deleted)" folder. Delete the "foo" folder, and rename the "foo (deleted)" folder to "foo".

All of the above restored parental control functionality for my managed users where it hadn't been working before.