How to Turn on Screen Time on Mac

When your child spends a lot of time on your Mac and says most of the time he spent was on homework, would you certainly believe that he is telling the truth and not lying? Are you concerned about how he spends his time on the Mac machine?

Well, you should be concerned as you never know when kids are navigated to objectionable or dangerous websites.

We need to restrict our kids to be exposed to unknown or unwanted vulnerable Apps and content. For that, we may take the help of a Parental Control App or we may also take advantage of Mac’s Screen Time feature. Now if you are wondering how to turn ON screen time on Mac and how to keep a tap on the same, we have got it sorted for you in this article.

Let’s discuss how to turn ON Mac screen time and keep our kids secured using this Mac’s built-in parental control App.

What is Mac’s Screen Time?

Screen Time is a tool that was launched with the iPhone and iPad in the year 2018 designed to record the amount of time you spend on various apps, social networking sites, and games. If you are spending too much time on your iPhone and iPad, with iOS 12, you can set screen time limits for yourself or your child and develop some healthy device habits.

Screen Time is loaded with blocking features to limit usage. There are other parental controls available which are capable of placing limits on communication, mostly from specific contacts. Let’s understand how to turn on Mac Screen Time.

How to turn ON Mac Screen Time?

Step 1. Go to system preferences in MacOS Catalina.

Step 2. Click on Screen Time in System Preferences.

Step 3. Select the Options button at the bottom left.

Step 4. Click the Turn On button at the top right.

How to turn OFF Screen Time on MacOS?

Step 1. Go to system preferences in MacOS Catalina.

Step 2. Click on Screen Time in System Preferences.

Step 3. Select the Options button at the bottom left.

Step 4. Click the Turn OFF button at the top right.

How to Access The Parental Controls Log?

Now once you have captured the Screen Time, We are sure you would wish to know how your kids spent their time on the device. Now it’s time to figure out for what we did this entire exercise for.

Here are the steps to access the Parental Controls log, work on your child’s computer:

Step 1. Open System Preferences and go to Parental Controls.

Step 2. Click the lock icon at the lower left of the pane, and sign in with your administrator password.

Step 3. From the list at the left, select your child’s account.

Step 4. At the lower right of the pane, click the Logs button.

Add a password to Screen Time on MacOS

When you turn ON Mac Screen Time, there are possibilities that your kid can turn it OFF. You get an option to set a password in Screen Time feature on Mac. This will ensure that your settings on the machine is secured and also use the password to extend the time for users when necessary.

Step 1. Open Screen Time in System Preferences.

Step 2. Select the Options button at the bottom left corner.

Step 3. Check the ‘Use Screen Time Password’ box.

Schedule Downtime using Screen Time for MacOS

Another important feature of Mac Parental Control is that you can schedule downtime on Mac Screen Time. During Downtime, only apps you choose to allow will work and you can make phone calls when applicable. To set up a Downtime schedule, you may follow these steps:

Step 1. Go to Screen Time in System Preferences.

Step 2. Click on ‘Downtime’ on the left-hand side panel.

Step 3. Click on the ‘Turn On’ button to activate Downtime.

Step 4. Configure Downtime settings using the radio buttons by selecting ‘Every Day’ or ‘Custom’ depending on your preferences.

Configure Screen Time to Limit Social Media Use on iPhone or iPad

As we have set Mac Screen Time for Mac computer, we can also set preferences using Screen Time to Limit Social Media Use on iPhone or iPad. This parental Control feature is useful for parents who leave their kids with smartphones to keep them engaged or make use of smartphones.

Step 1. Open ‘Settings’ on your iPhone or iPad and go to ‘Screen Time’.

Step 2. Tap on ‘App Limits’ and configure ‘Add Limit’ under the App Limits section.

Step 3. Look for and tap on ‘Social Networking’ and tap on ‘Add’.

Step 4. Scroll the slider to select the time limit you wish to enforce on all ‘Social Networking’ apps, then tap on ‘Back’ or exit out of ‘Settings’ when finished.

Summing Up

So next time whenever you handover any device to your kid, you know how to turn on Mac Screen Time and ensure that it is turned ON and your kid’s activities are getting captured. So make use of these parental control Apps and if this article helped you or you know someone who can be benefited with these steps, do like and share the article.

If you have any other issues related to Screen Time, do share the same in the comment section and we will revert with an appropriate solution to it.