Q: OS X El Capitan:  Parental Controls NOT working

Still not fixed in 10.11.4.

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.

and yes I have the latest update 10.11.4

I called about this before the first el capitan patch.

I don't have 10 hours of time to spent on the phone with Apple. Just because I call, it doesn't mean they will fix it immediately. I leave feedback all the time, through feedback assistant and the website. Updates usually have months of betas. iOS 9.2.1, iOS 9.3, OS X 10.11.3, and 10.11.4 are ALL betas, and there's no fixes for these issues. iWork for iCloud was a in beta for years...

yea I don't have 10 hours either.  lost a whole weekend with the family so the kids can use the computer.  still not right.  Im an advanced practitioner in medical field, not computer person.  feedback assistant sounds great.   just learned about that thanks to you:)  coming from pc dell land I found the apple folks to be quite helpful.  maybe it won't get fixed but figured if more call, it cant hurt.  every advisor I spoke with said this issue is not even on the radar.  if that is the case I guess they wont fix it.  do you think that relative to how many apple users there are in the world versus how many have this problem, the number is too low (even though it may be a few hundred or more) to show up on the radar? in other words, maybe it isn't a big enough problem for them.  It is crippling for those of us who have it. so that's why it seems like the more that tell them in whatever means is convenient to them, the better off we are.  Has anyone used the Intego Content Barrier for Macs? perhaps that is a better option-or will that be plagued with more problems? any computer talented people have some input on that....??

I haven't used that, but we are I am using K9 web protection now. It is free, and seems to work fairly well, but it blocks a lot of system processes from accessing the internet. I repair computers, but I've never tried Intego Content Barrier. At least not yet... Since the parental controls (or family safety) in Windows 10 is useless too, I pretty much completely use K9. I just hope Apple fixes their built in settings. It it's not going to work, I assume just remove it from System Preferences altogether...

I agree, it's not like this is a highly advertised feature.  If it doesn't work, nix it.  Sell me some software.  I just need my system to operate in the way I intend it to.

We use Intego firewall and antivirus, pretty good stuff.

I wonder how much of the pain some users are feeling is self-inflicted.

I don't have small kids anymore (they are now adult), so I hadn't tried Parental Controls. I did set up a few limitations for the guest account just to see how they would work and they worked as expected - limiting access to websites, or the specific movies or books in the itunes store was as it was supposed to be.

Most of the problems in El Capitan are due to one of two things - old incompatible software; or "cleaners" and antivirus. The latter may give the user a false sense of security, but they basically tend to cripple your mac and do nothing useful whatsoever.

I do not have an antivirus on my Mac. One of the most heavily advertised features of an Apple computer is its resistance to PC viruses, which I a lot of experience with. I am not using outdated software either. The reason this post is here is because of issues with 10.11 El Capitan, which was released in September 2015. I have had the problem with at least 5 Macs. The main problem for me is the "allow access to only these websites" bubble won't stay selected.

There are obviously issues in the code, because the issue is slightly different for everybody. I don't use cleaners either. The best way to clean a Mac is to restart it. http://osxdaily.com/2016/01/13/delete-temporary-items-private-var-folders-mac-os -x/ . I just hope Apple can fix the issue. It would be so easy for them! I have formatted hard drives and reinstalled OS X too. I just wish the parental controls were the same as Yosemite.

In our business due to compliance regulations (even if we disagree) we have to have 2 way firewall and antivirus.

So the biggest issues with Parental Controls are:

It does not remember settings for access control on applications.

Printer Proxy shows up every time theres a print even if it has been allowed in parental controls.

Application icons duplicate in simple finder.

These sound like small issues, but these are feature breaking issues when you restrict access to terminal in the settings of parental controls but people can still run it.

In my limited testing, I could not reproduce any of this. I limited the applications and websites the guest account on my mac is allowed to access and sure enough these limitations were enforced; plus they stuck through multiple logins and a restart of the machine.

I disallowed Terminal and trying to open it brought a dialog requiring an admin user and password with the options to cancel, allow once or allow always - the only caveat I noticed was that "allow once" here seems to mean allow for the current login session (not just launching the application once, as it may seem to mean).

This problem is on mac mini's for the most part.  Core2duo all the way up to a 2011 i5 mac mini. 

Oh and it will happen on my macbook air 2013 as well.

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.