Level 1

58 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

21 replies

Dec 11, 2017 5:55 PM in response to lemminkainen

Apple, what is the status of bug #10534135?

How old is this bug? Why has it not been fixed yet?

thanks

tekfranz Author

Level 1

58 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!

tekfranz Author

Level 1

58 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.

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...

tekfranz Author

Level 1

58 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.

tekfranz Author

Level 1

58 points

Mar 27, 2017 12:11 PM in response to tekfranz

Is there anymore input on this issue? It seems to be reported on several of the Apple Blogs as well.

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Parental Controls -Limit Applications not Saving or Applying Settings