Messed up Parental controls

I am the only user on this computer. In Parental controls I accidentally added Parental controls (removing administrator privileges) on my account. Now I cant change it back. Is there a default username/password for the admin? I am on vacation and do not have my system disk to reset password.

Is there an Apple store nearby? If so, you might be able to get some help there or perhaps a third party Apple reseller store? I honestly cannot think of any way to get around your situation without an administrator disk because what you need to do is boot from it, create a new Administrator account, then use it to turn off parental controls on your other account.
Take this as a two part lesson. First part is to never leave home without your original OS disc. Second is to always have more than one administrator account and also at least one spare non-administrator account on all your Macs, and of course, don't forget their passwords.

Similar Messages

Safari has stopped working properly since upgrading to Mountain Lion. Have parental controls in place and it will not add websites. Also short cuts at top of tabs now all messed up!

Since upgrading to mountain lion the other day (from lion) safari has not been working properly. I have parental controls in place but seem unable to add new web pages to allowed list - wasn't expecting to have to anyway - these are webpages that were working perfectly well on safari prior to upgrade. Also the shortcuts above the tabs on safari are all now messed up.
Any advice on how to fix - I am not a computer expert so keep it simple please!
In the meantime I am having to use Firefox.
Thanks
Andrew

Since upgrading to mountain lion the other day (from lion) safari has not been working properly. I have parental controls in place but seem unable to add new web pages to allowed list - wasn't expecting to have to anyway - these are webpages that were working perfectly well on safari prior to upgrade. Also the shortcuts above the tabs on safari are all now messed up.
Any advice on how to fix - I am not a computer expert so keep it simple please!
In the meantime I am having to use Firefox.
Thanks
Andrew

Parental controls messed up ever since I upgraded.

I am underage, and my parents are the admins on my Macbook Air; we have parental controls putting a time limit on my login. But ever since I upgraded to Mountain Lion, if I close the laptop without logging out, when I open it back up, the system kicks me off and says I used up all my computer time for the day (even though I haven't). It also doesn't give me the 15, 10, 5, and 1 minute warnings anymore. I can't figure out what's wrong! Can anyone help?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4334030?tstart=0

Really confused here. I have somehow created both a managed account and an administrator account. The admin acct is now highlighted in system preferences. We are now blocked from using our computer because parental controls keeps popping up.

In attempting to add a music lesson program for my daughters band lessons we have messed up our computer. I now have both a managed account and an administrator account (both in my name). It is using the managed account now and not letting use the Internet because parental controls keep popping up. I would like to delete the managed account and get back to the admin account but I have no idea what my login is for the admin account. We have never had to use it before this problem started and what we thought it was when we set it up does not work. Any ideas?

If the user account is associated with an Apple ID, and you know that account password, the Apple ID can be used to reset your user account password.
Otherwise, boot into Recovery by holding down the key combination command-R at startup. Release the keys when you see a gray screen with a spinning dial.
When the OS X Utilities screen appears, select Utilities ▹ Terminal from the menu bar.
In the Terminal window, type this:
resetpassword
That's one word with no spaces. Then press return. A Reset Password window opens.
Select your boot volume if not already selected.
Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.
Follow the prompts to reset the password. It's safest to choose a password that includes only the characters a-z, A-Z, and 0-9.
Select  ▹ Restart from the menu bar.
You should now be able to log in with the new password, but you won't be able to unlock the Keychain. If you've forgotten the Keychain password (which is ordinarily the same as your login password), there's no way to recover it. You’ll need to reset your keychain in the preferences of the Keychain Access application.

Can't add a program to an account in parental controls

I'm a teacher who recently received a number of IMacs. I've set up a parental controlled account using only simple finder. I've also only allowed certain programs to be accessed via their account. My problem is that I've added the program Digicel Flipbook and want them to be able to use it. Unfortunately, it doesn't show up as one of the programs to be allowed. I've logged in and out, trying to give the students read write permissions, but it still doesn't show up. I don't want them to have full access to finder, especially with some of the built in programs that they can mess around with. Also, when we installed the program, we just dragged it into the apps folder, but it wasn't installed as a .dmg extension. It just started out as a .zip file. I don't know if this is part of the problem, but might as well throw in all the info I can. Thanks.

Hi darkus,
The fact that it's a .zip file doesn't matter—OS X can handle those just fine.
I do have a question, though. I just downloaded, installed, and played around with Flipbook, and I note that if you haven't unzipped the file, Parental Controls won't allow you to add it. Have you already unzipped it?
If you have (and it still doesn't show up), you can drag the program's icon (not the whole folder) within the Parental Controls "check the applications to allow" window. Once you drag it there, just type "flip" into the small Spotlight bar right above the window, and it should be in there.
Hope that helps!
—Hazy

Parental control of iTunes over multiple users

Hi I have been able to move my iTunes folder to public which has allowed another user account to access content. However in this other account I have tried to put parental controls in place. On testing I played a 15 rated movie downloaded from iTunes and it played it no problem not even a password request. Is this due to me moving the iTunes folder to public? Basically I want my daughter to be able to watch only some movies and I don't want to be messing around putting certain films in certain folders and other films in other folders

I am sorry, I gave you the wrong info.
This is a link to a info video on setting up Parental Controls ON a MAC computer NOT iOS
http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#parentalcontrols
To set up Restrictions in DVD Player:
Turn on parental control
To restrict access to DVDs for certain users, such as children, turn on parental control in DVD Player.
Choose Features > Enable Parental Control, and then enter an administrator name and password.
To remove parental control, choose Features > Disable Parental Control.
When parental control is enabled and a DVD is inserted, a computer administrator must authorize a DVD before it can be played. You can also set up authorization for a specific DVD.
Sorry about the confusion.

What happened to the parental controls page

I have not had occasion to mess with any parental controls recently until today. I had the page bookmarked that allowed me to control what email addresses my minor child could send and receive email to/from and that page is gone. I cannot for the life of me find anywhere on this site where to adjust parental control settings. I now have another minor child for whom we've created a sub account for and I have no way of controlling what email is allowed in. Why I try to go to Manage Sub Accounts I get an error message that that page no longer exists. Argh! I've been fooling with this site and the Verizon Yahoo site for over an hour. Where is the parental controls page that actually lets me set the parameters?!

Thank you. That does the trick.
As a suggestion, you might want to put something in the tool tip for that star, saying that double click opens controls.

Firefox will not set as my default browser? My desktop icon only allows me to open Firefox as an administrator? My family's Firefox accounts work fine. I have 3 other accounts have parental controls. Would that have an effect? in English

* Firefox will not set as my default browser, regardless of setting the option?
* My desktop icon only allows me to open Firefox as an administrator, while my family's Firefox icons are accessible?
* The 3 other accounts have parental controls and was wondering if that would have an effect?

OK, I think I have this solved. After reading my post over, I decided to rethink the problem. First thing I did was download Chrome and I tried using that and IE again and surprise! I was having the same problem on those browsers as well. So now we know it wasn't Firefox. I then figured maybe a slow computer meant a virus, so I ran scans. I've had both Avast and IOBit for months now and I've never had a problem with either of them before. Then I downloaded Malwarebytes and ran a third scan. They all picked some stuff up, but nothing serious. Then I tried disabling all the antivirus stuff and that didn't solve anything. But then I decided to keep Malwarebytes and I uninstalled IOBit Security and whammo - problem solved.
I have no idea why out of the blue IOBit would be causing a problem like this so if someone knows, please let me in on the secret. Additionally, IE was working fairly well last night but not this morning. I also don't know why removing IOBit would take care of the nsAppShell issue, because supposedly, that's related to Firefox plug ins. And one more thing...when Comcast hooked my neighbor up to cable, they did it by putting a splitter on my line. They were messing about with the lines yesterday before I got on my computer last night trying to decide how to rerun them and today they did that, taking the splitter off my line and giving my neighbor his own line. That was finished about 30 minutes before I uninstalled IOBit. So....who knows?
But I ain't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. I have my Firefox back and I am so sorry for bad mouthing you last night - I love you, Firefox!

Parental Controls logs pretty useless for viewing

Here's a very simple use case where the "logs" feature fails miserably:
We give our daughter complete access to the internet, but occasionally - usually when the homework she does takes 2-3 times longer than it should - we want to check the logs to see whether her online time is actually spent at homework-related sites. Last night she didn't go to bed 'til midnight, so today I wanted to check which web sites she visited between 10pm and midnight. Simple enough, right? Not with Mac OSX's half-baked log feature
I go into Parental Controls and click on the Logs and proceed to "Web Sites Visited". I am greeted with "Show activity for: One week" and "Group by: Website" followed by a list of web sites that have been visited in the last week.
Problem 1: Since "Yesterday" isn't an option, I have to slog through logs for a whole week. Worse yet, since the grouping by website doesn't give any date information whatsoever at the top level, I'd have to individually open the hundreds of sites she's visited in the last week, just to find the ones she went to last night. Obviously not feasible. So, I change the Group-by to "Date" and - conveniently, there's a "Yesterday" drop-down. Cool! Well, maybe not:
Problem 2: When categorizing by Date and you drill down on "Yesterday", it shows all the web sites visited yesterday, but since the log window is too narrow and isn't resizable, you can't even see the full URL, much less any timestamp there might be appended to the web site URL.
Now what kind of asinine implementation is this? Did Apple actualy pay a developer to produce such an horrendous interface? Worse yet, Apple hasn't seen it fit to fix this mess in several releases now. I just upgraded to 10.8.3 and it's the same useless garbage.
I searched on the net to see if there's some other way to view this information (the access data is stored in a file called events.data in /Library/Application\ Support/....) and came across a suggestion to load a Firefox extension for SQLLite and view that file through it. I actually got that working, but the dates given in this database weren't meant for humon consumption - they're just numbers. So I did a reverse sort on that column and, voila, I see my daughter's most recent accesses....except I don't know where to stop reading, since I'm only interested in most-recent to 10pm last night. But isn't it pathetic that I have to jump through all these hoops - just because some amateur developer at Apple hasn't seen it fit to allow horizontal resizing of the window - or at least a horizontal scroll bar? Worse yet, that Apple hasn't done a thing about it since at least Snow Leopard? So frustrating - since it would be such an easy fix.
Finally to my question: does anyone know of a way to view this log that doesn't require extensive knowledge of the system, SQL, etc. - like a graphical tool built into Mac OSX?

I have the exact same question and issue. When I check to see all the apps he's used in the last year, it comes up blank in the logs. All I get in the logs is rejected websites ending in late January.
Does anyone know where the logs are stored? My other kids' logs are working just fine which is the real puzzler.

Parental Controls malfunction

Hello,
I am setting up a bunch of new computers at work, and am setting up a general non-administrator account on each computer with specific applications and settings.
In order to protect the computers from people who will mess with them, I set up parental controls and UN-Checked System Preferences from the list of allowable applications. This worked on all but ONE computer... which I can actually open system preferences and change things while on that non-admin account with parental controls. I tried restarting, and it still allows me to open system preferences, even after I verified it is UN-Checked.
Any suggestions?

Hello sf23103,
First of all, if you have a system update, update it.
There have been some parental control problems in some versions of 10.5
Have you tried creating a new user and seeing if parental controls will work on that user?
There is a slight possibility that user permissions might be screwed on that computer.
to check for this or fix this, open Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
Within that application, click on your running hard drive, and click verify disk permissions
after that finishes, if there is nothing, then click verify disk.
If nothing works for you, as a last resort you can reinstall the system and it should work fine

Parental Controls fixed with 10.5.1?

I got my first mac the same weekend Leopard was released. My wife and I were very happy to see the parental controls feature, at first. When we enabled it for our children's account everything appeared to be working, then we logged into our accounts. Dashboard was messed up, programs (specifically World of Warcraft) were being corrupted by blocking them on different accounts, etc etc.
Before I go back and re-enable parental controls I was wondering if anyone knew whether or not some of these issues were fixed in 10.5.1 (I know they were common problems from searching the forums). I really dont feel like re-enabling and then having to reinstall again to set things right.
Thanks in advance for the help.

I had a small touch of P.C. wierdness prior to the latest update, and since applied - all seems fine.
I did review the update details, but not the security side. Although it was not listed as an item of address, it may very well have been touched by something else not seen.
Beavis2084

ITunes 7.1.1 Parental Controls Permanently Unlocked!

So, after upgrading to iTunes 7.1.1, I find it impossible to lock the Parental Controls Preferences after making changes:
Configure selections, click lock, authenticate.
Restart application after quitting.
Access Parental Controls in Preferences only to find them left unlocked.
User can make changes at will!
Not much of a control!
Now I've got to find a way to downgrade just to recover this feature!
Several Mac OS X (10.3.9)

After two phone calls to Apple's tech support, I still don't have a solution. The last guy said I needed to talk to a product specialist. Unfortunately, that'll have to wait until tomorrow because we were still trying to figure out the problem well after hours and all the specialists had already left for the day.
Hopefully, I have a solution tomorrow. Fingers crossed.
Before hanging up, the Tech guy mentioned that removing iTunes and reinstalling might fix the problem. However, right before going through this process, he said that I would need to talk to a specialist, but like I said, that won't happen until tomorrow. I'm not very confident I can remove the program without messing something up so, if anyone out there wants to try it out, let me know if it worked.

Parental control accounts

Hi,
Please could somebody explain how I would allow my daughter (whose account I have setup with parental controls) to change her desktop background without me having to key in the admin user & password.
Thanks very much.
mark

markjtm wrote:
hmmm, thanks for your reply, but I don't want to give her access to ALL of system preferences... can I just allow access to the Desktop ?
Non-admin users can only modify system preferences that change their own account settings. No global or other users' settings can be modified from a non-admin account unless the user knows the admin account's password. So if you give her access to the whole System Preferences app, you don't have to worry about anything getting messed up for anyone else.
But if limiting the user's System Prefs access to the Desktop only is what you really want, you can do this with Workgroup Manager, which you can download as part of the Leopard Server Admin Tools.

Setting parental controls via profile manager

So I've got Lion Server running on an older mac mini. I've setup up accounts on the server for my kids. (they're my guinea pigs!) We have 2 other macs in the house both running Mavericks. I'm able to do a networkin login into the kids' accounts from those client machines with no problem. I'm also storing their home folders on the server and creating "mobile" accounts (I think that's the terminology) on the client machines. I've installed the Trust certificate from the server onto those client machines. I've also installed the group certificate on the client machiens. (most of the profile manager settings I have for the kids are handled in a group called "kids")
Here's the problem: if I try to enforce parental controls on the kids' accounts (such as limiting the time they can be on them, etc) it doesn't work. In fact, after the settings get pushed to the client machines, they (the client machines) often will lock-up or start acting really flaky. A reboot "fixes" that, but the parental controls still won't work.
I've tried this literally dozens of times with the same result. Other changes in profile manager, such as restricting access to certain apps, DOES seem to work. It's mainly just the settings related to parental controls that seem to be the problem.
Am I doing something wrong? Is this stuff supposed to work? Thanks for any help, this is incredibly frustrating!

Unfortunatley I never got this resolved. In fact, it turns out that this is really a bug in how the parental controls work with a "managed" account. All of the other settings that can be managed on OSX server seemed to work just fine in my testing, but the parental controls do not. Or more specifically, the curfew (time limit) settings definitely don't work. It's hard to believe, but apparently this is a use-case Apple never considered. (if you do some googling for parental controls and OSX server you'll find we're not alone)
I don't recall exactly, but if you're trying to determine if changes got pushed to the clients there is something in the profile manager (web UI) that shows "completed tasks" or "active tasks" (or something like that) which should show what was pushed and if it was succssfully received by the client.
Anyway, after all that effort I ended up not using the profile management feature in OSX server at all. My kids accounts are now just plain 'old local accounts. I came to the conclusion (as many others have) that OSX server, at least in a home setting, just isn't worth the effort. It's too bad because if it all worked properly it could be really useful. If you still want to mess around with OSX server you might want to check out some nice youtube videos by a guy named Todd Olthof. He has a bunch of videos on OSX server that are actually geared completely towards the home user.
Good luck!

Parental Controls are Useless???

in accessing my movies from my hard drive to Apple TV I have run into a bit of a snafu...Even with my parental controls on Apple TV turned OFF, I have to enter the passcode in to watch children's movies. But strangely enough it is ONLY children's movies that are affected. Literally! I tagged my movies using Subler and TagChimp, removed the info and still the same problem. So whether I have the parental controls on or not my children can watch The Dark Night with no problems, but I have to typein my passcode in order for them to watch Lady and the Tramp. Any ideas?

Parental controls seem quite messed up - I was having to enter the code for any kind of previews, turned them off and it it still causes problems.
Thought it was just me and that it was late.
If you have the children's stuff tagged as 'Children's' this may be a side effect of the apostrophe bug now making Children's genre show ALL content types including music! As you've not specifically mentiones that, it may be something else.
Please send feedback:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/appletv.html

Messed up Parental controls

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