OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Summary

The Parental Controls system preference lets administrators restrict the applications that other accounts can use, as well as set time limits and restricted use hours for the Mac on a per-user basis. These controls also enable the administrator to decide how much control each account has over printers, the Dock, CD and DVD creation, and its own password.

The parental controls also can restrict access to specific websites or websites deemed inappropriate for children, as well as restrict who the user can correspond with via e-mail and instant messaging. But these three controls work only with Apple's Safari, Mail, and Messages applications, not with alternative products.

Administrators can monitor the activities of accounts to which parental controls have been applied, such as seeing the data and times for accessed applications, websites blocked, and logs of chat sessions. Administrators also can open applications used by the parentally controlled users to see their state, such as the e-mails sent and received and the music and video downloaded.

To ease the management of parental controls, administrators can apply settings from one user to other users, as well as allow access to the Mac's parental controls from a remote Mac. This enables a parent to adjust parental controls or monitor activity from work while the child is home, for example.