Make sure you enter the correct date of birth you can't change it later.When your kids try to buy stuff, your phone pops up a permission request. You can use the child's email address for their Apple ID. Follow the onscreen instructions to finish setting up the account. Click Create Child Account. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences.Go through terms and conditions. If this option is invisible, you should ensure that you have signed out iCloud. Now, click the ‘Create Apple ID’ option. Open the App Store on Mac PC. Over the summer I decided to give my kids an old Apple laptop to share.Creating an Apple ID on Mac.
![]() A clean slateBecause I was reusing an old laptop I decided to wipe it clean and start again. Later this week we’ll walk you through a similar setup for a Windows machine so stay tuned for that. What is the problem Why can't I create an Apple ID This is a new Mac (provided by work), so I am 99 sure I am not hitting the per-device Apple ID limit.The kids have been at school for a few years and they’re are old enough to have a little independence, but most of what they do is supervised or subject to fairly restrictive boundaries.The Mac would be no exception, there would be boundaries, so I enlisted its in-built parental controls to see what they could do, and how they could help.This article walks you through the things I did to secure the laptop, and details the parental controls and options I chose. Your account cannot be created at this time. You will be asked to sign in with Apple ID, click Create New Apple ID.There was a problem creating your new Apple ID. Under your name it should say Admin.Before setting up parental controls we need to create an account for each child. On the left hand side is a list of users. UsersAs our starting point I will assume you have a working Mac on which you have Admin rights.Log on to your Mac and go to System Preferences > Users & Groups. What is important is that each of your children starts with their own clean slate: a user account that’s theirs and nobody else’s. I’m just letting you know what state my laptop was in when I wrote these steps.All you need is a working Mac that you’re happy for your kids to spend some time on. Create An Apple Id For Your Child On Password At ThisClick the arrows to list the apps on your computer. AppsThe Apps tab lets you limit access to the computer’s camera, set restrictions on email and multiplayer games, and create an allow list of apps.I couldn’t think of a reason my children would need the camera or multiplayer games so I unticked Allow use of camera and Allow joining Game Center multiplayer games.To restrict who can exchange emails with your child tick Limit Mail to allowed contacts and click the Manage… button.I ticked Send requests to and entered my email address so that I’ll be notified of any attempts to email sombody who isn’t on the allow list.Click the + button and add the names and email addresses of the contacts you’ll allow.Next, tick Limit Applications on this Mac. It’s easy to change the settings if later if you get something wrong.As you go through the controls, pay careful attention to the labels because you’ll be using ticks to indicate both positives and negatives – sometimes your tick means allow, at other times it might be disable or restrict.There are six tabs in the parental controls pane: Apps, Web, Stores, Time, Privacy and Other. If I couldn’t immediately think of a sensible use case for allowing something, I switched it off. Parental controlsDifferent families will require different settings so I’m going to take you through the very restrictive set that I used, as an example, but your mileage may vary.Whatever your choices, I suggest you apply the principle of least privilege, giving your children the access they need, and no more. I suggest you enter a placeholder password at this point – you can help your child to change it later.When you click Create user you’ll see that your child has been added to the list of users on the left, and that Enable parental controls is ticked.Highlight the child’s name in the left hand menu and click the Open Parental Controls… button. Note that Apple is very clear that it’s trying to limit access with this tool. To add a website to the list click the + button.If you want to give your kids more freedom then the second option, Try to limit access to adult websites, might be worth a try. WebTo put some boundaries on my child’s web access I clicked on the Web tab and selected Allow access to only these websites. Under Allow changes to you’ll see a list of items that can be changed by apps on the computer. I chose to limit time to one hour per day at times of day when they’re normally awake.To cap the amount of time to one hour per day, tick Limit weekday use to and Limit weekend use to, and set the sliders to 1 hour a day.To prevent access overnight I ticked School nights and Weekend, and set the times to 20:00 and the finish times to 07:30.The Privacy tab limits access to your kids’ data. I couldn’t imagine a situation where that would actually be necessary but the principle of least privilege applies – the child doesn’t need it, so they don’t get it.The controls under the Time tab allow you to specify how long your child can use the laptop for, and at what times of day. Finally, I ticked to restrict Books with explicit sexual content. I ticked options to disable iTunes Store, iTunes U and the iBooks Store.I also ticked to restrict Music with explicit content, and then ticked Movies to:, TV shows to: and Apps to:, and choose age-appropriate values from their drop downs. StoresUnder the Stores tab you can set up controls for accessing TV shows, books and movies, as well as Apple’s online stores. This feature allows you to modify the parental controls on your child’s computer from another Mac on the same network.To enable it, click on the settings icon (the cog) under the list of children’s names on the left of the Parental Controls pane, and click Allow Remote Setup.If you log into a different Mac on the same network and go to System Preferences > Parental Controls you’ll see the name of your child’s computer. Note that the first five options are negative and the last, Use Simple Finder, is positive.I elected to untick Prevent the Dock from being modified, so my child could customise the appearance to their liking (see the passwords section below for more on that), and I elected to Use Simple Finder, because computers are baffling enough when everything is new.Hidden away where you’ll never, ever find it is an option to enable remote control of a computer’s parental controls. When you’re done just click the back button to return to the Privacy tab under Parental Controls where you started.The last tab in the row is Other, and it’s where Apple has swept all the things that don’t fit anywhere else under one rug. So, if you want Siri and Maps to have access to Location Services, you can set it here.Either because my Mac was pretty bare, or because of the options I selected when setting up the Mac (such as disabling Siri entirely), there was nothing for me to untick here.Note that clicking Manage Privacy… kicks you out of the Parental Controls pane and opens up the Privacy tab of the Security & Privacy pane. Infozone usb ethernet adapter driver for macThis gets them used to the idea of logging in to the computer again if they leave it for a while, which is a good habit to develop.I suggest you also turn on the firewall by clicking the Firewall tab selecting Turn On Firewall. In System Preferences open the Security & Privacy pane.Under the General tab tick Require password and then choose the shortest time you think your child can stand from the drop down list. Once you’ve logged in you’ll be able to select your child’s name and modify their parental controls as if you were sat at their computer.Outside of the parental controls there are a few other settings worth paying attention to. For now I decided it’s enough for me that they choose passwords they can remember, so that they can practice keeping them secret. We’ll tackle password complexity when they’re older. While I was getting my kids’ laptop ready I spent a lot of time thinking about how to get them on the right track with computer security.I wanted to get them doing some important things right, straight off the bat, so that they become habits – preferably things that I could build on as they got older, but without bewildering them.I decided to focus on one thing – passwords are supposed to be secret.There’s more to creating a strong password than that, of course, but it’s an essential building block.
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