Parental Controls -Limit Applications not Saving or Applying Settings

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Level 1

52 points

Parental Controls -Limit Applications not Saving or Applying Settings

On setting up Parental Controls to Limit applications in MacOS Sierra for my Child, I wished to limit access just two apps, iTunes and the App Store. However, after checking most of apps off in the Allow List to Allow them to run, I observed two things occurring:

1.) The check boxes would not remain saved.

2.) Even though most apps were allowed, when opening an allowed app from the Managed User we were prompted to enter continually the Administrator Password. This should not have occurred because the Apps were in the Allowed List.

We would expect to be able to run an allowed app without a warning and only receive warnings on disallowed ones.

Does anyone else have Parental ControlsLimit Apps working MacOS Sierra?

Mac mini, macOS Sierra (10.12.3)

Posted on Mar 18, 2017 3:48 PM

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Answer 1

tekfranz Author

Level 1

52 points

Mar 28, 2017 8:45 PM in response to tekfranz

I was able to speak with Apple Care and they were very helpful.

It is very important that your restricted user is not a "Standard User" Account, but rather a "Managed User" Account. This is stated in this article macOS Sierra: Set up parental controls. Things began to work much better after I made the switch to a "Managed User" and I was able to block the App Store and iTunes.
After you set the setting Log out and log Back in again.
There are some issues yet with the some apps not retaining their "Allow" setting that hopefully I will figure out how to resolve yet.

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Answer 2

Leanne_68

Community Specialist

Mar 19, 2017 11:41 AM in response to tekfranz

Greetings, tekfranz!

Thanks for reaching out to the Apple Support Communities! It sounds like you are having issues getting your Parental control settings to save on your computer. What you might want to try is a specific restart. Check out this article to Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac . Once you are in safe mode, follow the steps in this article for macOS Sierra: Set up parental controls

Another option you can try is in this article: How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac . This will allow you to check to see if the issue is user specific or system wide.

Let us know the results and have a great day!

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Answer 3

May 15, 2017 8:30 AM in response to tekfranz

I'm having this same problem. I want to create a second account on my MacBook Air (macOS Sierra 10.12.4 (16E195)) that acts solely as a console to open a couple of websites in Chrome. I've configured a user account as a managed user and applied parental controls to use the simple finder, restrict apps to Google Chrome, and to limit the websites that can be visited. When I switch to the managed user account, I get hundreds of errors saying that apps can't be accessed, when I try to launch Chrome it tells me that there is no permission, and when I attempt to connect to wifi the http://captive.apple.com/hotspot-detect.html web page won't load. I've tried recreating the account several times but no luck. Anyone know how to resolve this?

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Answer 4

Eric Root

Level 10

684,039 points

Nov 11, 2017 7:45 AM in response to jcalvert2

Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem or a suggestion for change. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem/suggested change solved sooner.

Click here to send Feedback

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Answer 5

Nov 11, 2017 4:29 PM in response to Eric Root

Yeah, maybe I will file a bug report [ https://bugreport.apple.com/web ]. But there's no way Apple doesn't already know about something this basic. A basic feature of the "world's most advanced operating system" doesn't work – go figure. This problem has existed at least since El Capitan (2015).

I already attempted to contact Apple about this, through their customer support chat. The chat window itself has major glitches, so each time I was starting to get somewhere with one of the technicians, the chat window would mysterious just close. Sometimes it would say "You've been disconnected from the Advisor due to a network issue." Other times, it was a glitch in the UI of the chat window... hitting backspace to delete text closed the chat window! Sometimes the chat would end these ways, other times it just ended for no reason... poof! After many attempts, I gave up.

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Answer 6

tekfranz Author

Level 1

52 points

Mar 19, 2017 6:21 PM in response to Leanne_68

Starr,

I tried on a MacBook pro instead of on the Mac mini and I experienced the same issue.

I created a Brand new user.
I allowed all the apps instead of iTunes and the App Store.
I logged in as the Managed User.

When I logged in:

I was prompted to Allow or Always allow programs I had already allowed repeatedly.
When i tried to modify the Allow List in Parental Controls, after a logout when I returned the configuration settings were no longer there.

So to summarize there are three issues:

The Application Blocked Message with Allow or Always Allow options pops up for Applications that are on the Allow list.
The Parental Controls do not obey the Always Allow setting as the dialog keeps popping repeatedly after clicking always allow.
After logout all the settings in Users - Parental Controls - Allowed Applications are lost and not saved or retained.

This would be great to have fixed. Thanks!

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Answer 7

tekfranz Author

Level 1

52 points

May 15, 2017 8:33 AM in response to lleyamfromlondon

The behavior got a bit better after restarting the machine.

Would you have time to contact AppleCare and show them the issue? I was going to demonstrate for them and they were going to get screenshots to send to their engineers, but I ran out of time.

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Answer 8

May 15, 2017 4:58 PM in response to tekfranz

I've also tried restarting and in various combinations.

I've now taken the approach of barely restricting anything, logging on and working through all of the error messages and granting permissions (that I haven't actually restricted anyway), and then progressively restricting apps off. It's just about working but it's not great. A few of the times I recreated the managed user account, on logon I was prompted to set-up as though it was a new Mac -- and even after that none of the parental controls were applied!

Unfortunately I'm not covered by AppleCare so I can't do that...

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Answer 9

tekfranz Author

Level 1

52 points

May 15, 2017 8:33 PM in response to lleyamfromlondon

OK, one other thing that was mentioned to my by the Support Technician I worked with is that the restrictions may work better restricting the built-in apps, rather than third-party apps. So it might be be good to try only restricting the Apple Apps at first.

Also, some of the forums hinted at ssl filtering also being a culprit. For example an app might make an https call out to a site to get logged in. This ssl call is filtered by the parental controls and prompts a pop-up dialog or it makes a call to the App Store which perchance is blocked.

Also on one of the other forums the idea was given to try whitelisting the bare minimum of appsetc...so as not to confuse the system.

There definitely is a problem in Parental Controls Allowed Apps and Apple is aware of it. I do hope they fix it. In the meantime we are using Covenant Eyes since we can block the URL's for Apps rather than restrict the actual app.

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Answer 10

Nov 10, 2017 2:27 PM in response to tekfranz

I just tested this same thing on a brand new Macbook Pro running High Sierra and it fails the same way: "check boxes would not remain saved." Yes, I created a managed user, not a standard user. It also fails for us on an older Macbook Pro running High Sierra, and a Mac Mini running El Capitan... all fail the same way.

Parental Controls on the Mac don't work.

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Answer 11

tekfranz Author

Level 1

52 points

Nov 11, 2017 4:36 PM in response to jcalvert2

I had better success with phone support. They were going to take it to the engineers if we could reproduce the issue after a full reset of the machine. I was out of time, but the advisor said the process would take a couple hours.

I would love to pursue it again I just don’t have the 4-5 hours to work through it.

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Answer 12

Nov 11, 2017 4:48 PM in response to tekfranz

@tekfranz: It's absurd (sorry, not you... the situation). We are not responsible for Apple doing their job!

My friend just bought a brand new MacBook Pro running High Sierra. It took me 5 minutes to test this and confirm there is a problem... the check-box selections for limiting applications don't save properly (yes, I created a managed user, not a standard user.) It's as if you can make selections, but OS X sort of ignores that and changes your selections to what it wants. The result is that apps will run that were not selected.

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Answer 13

Nov 16, 2017 8:19 AM in response to jcalvert2

Apple has just responded:

"Engineering has determined that your bug report (35490409) is a duplicate of 10534135 and will be closed. " The status of 10534135 is "OPEN".

This issue is a known problem with OS X.

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Answer 14

tekfranz Author

Level 1

52 points

Nov 16, 2017 8:24 AM in response to jcalvert2

Thanks for your effort in pursuing this jcalvert2. It helps the rest of us experiencing the issue with Parent Controls on a Mac not working.

I wonder how we can bring attention to bug report 10534135 and let Apple know it is important to us as users that Parental Controls be fixed, especially since it has gone through El Capitan and Sierra and now High Sierra without a fix.

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Answer 15

Nov 16, 2017 11:31 PM in response to tekfranz

@tekfranz, I think this is really on Apple now to do the right thing. The quality of OS X is at stake, because you can't have an active feature like this in the OS that simply doesn't work. That's not the right way to market software. Apple must be fully aware of the problem. I am guessing the problem predates El Capitan, as evidenced by the bug number. As far as I know, the bug numbers are sequential, so 10534135 may be quite old.

If you couple this with the fact that Apple is supposedly the most profitable company in the world, it makes one think how is it possible that their world-class operating system has dysfunctional parental controls? Don't get me wrong – I love Apple, but the gloss is getting glossier (and glassier), while the substance is showing some serious signs of decay. They've made some very strange design choices lately, too, for example the new MacBook Pro with its single type of physical port – Thunderbolt. Sleek, yes. Practical, no.

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