Mac 101: How to use the iTunes parental controls

As Apple removes sexually suggestive apps from the App Store (and is evidently preparing a Red Light District for the future), users are wondering how they can protect their kids from certain content. With that in mind, here's an overview of the parental controls in iTunes.

Note that the screenshot at right is from iTunes 9.0.3. Older versions look slightly different. Parental controls are only available in iTunes 5 and later.

To access these settings, select Preferences from the iTunes menu, and then click the Parental tab. Here you've got several options.

First, you can disable access to podcasts, internet radio or the iTunes Store completely. Note that you can keep iTunes U accessible while disabling the rest of the store. Additionally, you can deny access to shared libraries. Once turned off, these items won't appear in the left sidebar of the iTunes window.

Next, a drop-down menu lets you apply the content ratings systems from one of several countries to your own machine. From there, you can apply more fine-grained content restrictions. For example, if you've opted to use the US's ratings system, you can limit access to movies that are rated G, PG, PG-13 or R. Television shows can be limited in the same way (TV-Y, TV-Y7, etc.).

As for apps, there are four ratings, no matter which country's system you've selected: 4+, 9+, 12+ and 17+.

If you want even tighter restriction, select "Restrict explicit content." This won't let users preview, purchase or subscribe to content in the store that's been marked as explicit by the content providers.

Once you're done, click the lock to prevent further changes and provide your machine's administrator password (which your kids don't know, right?).

All of these changes must be set up for each user account that will have limited access. Also, changes made in iTunes on a Mac will apply to a mobile device (iPod touch or iPhone) that's tied to that same limited account. In other words, Jr. won't be able to use the mobile App Store to download apps that the desktop version denies.

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iTunes Mac 101

As Apple removes sexually suggestive apps from the App Store (and is evidently preparing a Red Light District for the future), users are...

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boogieted

The methods in this article are only helpful if your movies are tagged with a rating like "R" or "PG13". There's no way to customize to block "X" or "NC-17" content for movies that were acquired from somewhere other than the iTunes store. I would like to be able to do this--especially in the Apple TV. Or perhaps set up a way to password-protect certain movies in iTunes and AppleTV.

February 25 2010 at 8:37 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

morgs

What I have always wanted to understand is. Can I restrict what is played in Frontrow? My 4 year old son is all over front row and just picks up the remote on my Mac to start watching his videos. We purposefully don't buy movies in iTunes so that our son won't stumble across content that he is not old enough for yet.

February 25 2010 at 8:04 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

To state what should be obvious, give your child's account "Managed with parental controls" privileges when you create it.

Also, don't let a (slightly older?) child have access to the system disk that came with the Mac, or they can simply change your administrator password so they can login with those privileges and unset the parental controls (putting them back before you come to check)! I guess there's no way to stop them borrowing such a disk from a friend; a pity the password reset could not be made hardware-specific in some way to stop this last action.

Of course, this all assumes they simply don't have unfettered access to the Internet somewhere else, making your parental controls useless.

One problem with all of this is that unless the adult remembers to check the Mac for system updates regularly, they won't be applied nor will the non-administrator child be told that they are available. There's no preference that I can find (under System Preferences/Software Update) which says "Always apply system updates as they arrive; always trust Apple", only "Check for Updates"; the "You will be notified when the updates are ready to be installed" applies only to an Administrator, am I right? So one has to regularly manually check the Mac the child is using, and most times there'll be no update! At the very least I'd like a configurable popup which can be made to appear to the user of a "Managed" or "Standard" account to say, for example, "Sweetie, please tell Daddy that Apple have released an update for this computer's software; he'll want to apply it".

February 25 2010 at 7:15 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

jason mark

RE: Parental controls. My 2 year old LOVES my iPhone but every time he uses it he ends up deleting one app or another. I looked at parental controls and they limit a lot of things, but nothing appears to disable delete. Any tips?

Jason

February 24 2010 at 8:53 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply