Set up Family Safety

Windows 8, Windows RT
Windows 7

If your PC is connected to a domain, Family Safety might not be available. Check with your system administrator.

Family Safety helps you set limits on your child's PC time, as well as the websites, apps, and games they can use (and when). To set up Family Safety, you'll need an administrator account. For more info, see How do I know I'm signed in as an administrator? Before you get started, make sure each child you want to monitor has a standard user account—Family Safety can be applied only to standard accounts. For more info about user accounts, see Create a user account and Why use a standard account instead of an administrator account?

Watch a video about setting up Family Safety. (To view captions in your language, tap or click the Closed captioning button Closed Captioning button.)
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To set up a new child's account

  1. Open Family Safety by swiping in from the right edge of the screen, tapping Search (or if you're using a mouse, pointing to the upper-right corner of the screen, moving the mouse pointer down, and then clicking Search), entering family in the search box, tapping or clicking Settings, and then tapping or clicking Set up Family Safety for any user. ‌ Administrator permission required You might be asked for an admin password or to confirm your choice.

  2. Tap or click the create a new user account link.

  3. Do one of the following:

    • If your child already has an email address, enter it, and then tap or click Next.

    • If you want to create a new email address for your child, tap or click Sign up for a new email address and follow the instructions.

    • If you want your child to sign in to this PC only, tap or click Sign in without a Microsoft account, tap or click Local account, and follow the instructions.

  4. You'll see the Is this a child's account? Turn on Family Safety to get reports of their PC use check box on the final setup screen. Select the check box, and then tap or click Finish.

    Family Safety begins monitoring the new account automatically.

To turn on Family Safety for an existing child's account

  1. Open Family Safety by swiping in from the right edge of the screen, tapping Search (or if you're using a mouse, pointing to the upper-right corner of the screen, moving the mouse pointer down, and then clicking Search), entering family in the search box, tapping or clicking Settings, and then tapping or clicking Set up Family Safety for any user. ‌ Administrator permission required You might be asked for an admin password or to confirm your choice.

  2. Select the person you want to monitor with Family Safety.

    If your child doesn't have a standard user account, see To set up a new child's account.

  3. Under Family Safety, tap or click On, enforce current settings.

After you've turned on Family Safety for a child's account, you can adjust the individual settings that you want to control:

  • Web filtering. You can make sure your children only visit age-appropriate websites, and decide whether you want to allow file downloads. You can also block or allow specific websites.

  • Time limits. You can choose hours when your children are allowed to sign in to the PC, and even set different time limits for each day. If a child is signed in when their allotted time ends, they'll be signed out automatically.

  • Windows Store and game restrictions. You can control what games your children play, set an age-rating level, choose the types of content you want to block, and decide whether you want to allow or block specific games.

  • App restrictions. You can prevent children from running apps that you don't want them to use.

To change someone's Family Safety settings

  1. Open Family Safety by swiping in from the right edge of the screen, tapping Search (or if you're using a mouse, pointing to the upper-right corner of the screen, moving the mouse pointer down, and then clicking Search), entering family in the search box, tapping or clicking Settings, and then tapping or clicking Set up Family Safety for any user. ‌ Administrator permission required You might be asked for an admin password or to confirm your choice.

  2. Do one of the following:

    • To change settings for your whole family in one place, tap or click Manage settings on the Family Safety website.

    • To change settings for a specific account, tap or click the account. Under Windows settings, choose the settings you want to change.

Keeping your kids safer online can be complicated, but Family Safety helps make it easier for you. Family Safety provides a website and a free program that you install on the computers your kids use, so you can give them some independence but still keep tabs on their computer activities. Family Safety can also help keep your kids off websites you don’t want them looking at, and only let them talk to the people you're okay with them talking to.

How Family Safety works

Just like on a sports team, the different players in Family Safety and Windows make up a team that works together. The players are:

  • The Family Safety Filter. Software you install and set up on each computer your kids use. It monitors your kids using safety settings you select.

  • The Family Safety website. Where you choose and manage all the settings for each family member and view their activity reports. You can create settings on the website once and then they'll apply to every computer you’ve installed the Family Safety Filter on.

  • Windows Parental Controls. Turned on in Windows when you use Family Safety. You can use Windows Parental Controls to set up more safety settings for your kids' computers. For more information on setting up Windows Parental Controls and Family Safety, watch the video about using Parental Controls.

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Set up the Family Safety Filter

To monitor your children’s online activity, you need to install and set up the Family Safety Filter on each computer they use.

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Step 1: See if Family Safety is already installed on your computer

If you have Windows 7, Family Safety might already be installed on your computer. To set it up, click the Start button Picture of the Start button, click All Programs, click Windows Live , and then click Windows Live Family Safety .
Picture of the Start menu where you can run Windows Live Family SafetyIf Family Safety is already installed on your computer you can find it on the Start menu.

If Family Safety isn't installed on your computer, go to the Windows Live Family Safety download page , and then click Download. Follow the on-screen instructions to download and install Family Safety.

Step 2: Sign in to the Family Safety Filter with your Microsoft account

Enter the email address and password of the parent you want to be the primary parent, and then click Sign in.

To set up the Family Safety Filter and to use the Family Safety website, you’ll need a Microsoft account. If you don’t have a Microsoft account, click Sign up. (A Microsoft account is an email address you use, along with your password, to sign in to Microsoft services such as Outlook.com and Xbox LIVE.)

Note

Note

  • When you set up Family Safety for the first time, you'll be asked to sign in with a parent's Microsoft account. This parent will be the primary parent in Family Safety, and is the only family member who can remove the family from Family Safety. Be sure to use the Microsoft account of the parent you want to be the primary parent because you won’t be able to change it later.

Step 3: Select who you want to monitor

Select the check box next to the account of each family member you want to monitor on that computer, and then click Next or Save.

If you want to monitor someone who doesn’t have an account, click Create a new Windows account , enter their name, and then click Create account.

Family Safety works best when every member of your family has their own user account and safety settings. If everyone in your family uses the same user account, you’ll all use the same Family Safety settings and you won’t be able to get reports of which website each child is looking at. To make sure all of your kids have their own settings, add a user account for each person.

If you have guest accounts on your computer, you should turn them off because kids can also use them to bypass safety settings. For more information, see .

Picture of screen where you can choose which accounts you want to monitorYou can choose which accounts you want to monitor.

Step 4: Match your existing Family Safety members to their accounts

If you haven't used Family Safety before, you can skip this step. If you already use Family Safety, you’ll see a screen where you need to match each user account to a name on the Family Safety members list, and then click Save. If an account doesn't have a matching Family Safety name, click the option to add it.

You’ll recognize the people listed on the Family Safety members list as the people in your family who already use Family Safety. When you match them to their accounts, you're verifying for Family Safety that each person is matched to their own correct settings. For example, if your child's name is Ben, he might have an account named Ben, and be listed in the Family Safety members list as Ben Miller.

If there’s an account on the computer for someone that hasn’t used Family Safety before, you’ll see them at the bottom of the list, Add (name). When you choose this option, Family Safety creates a new Family Safety membership for them with their account name.

Picture of screen where you can choose which accounts to monitorYou can match your existing Family Safety settings to your accounts.

Step 5: Add passwords

If you don't have passwords for Windows administrator accounts or accounts you're not monitoring with Family Safety, you'll see the Add passwords screen. Click Add passwords.

It’s important that all of your user accounts have passwords. If you have an unmonitored account without a password, your kids could log on to that account and bypass their Family Safety settings. Then they might be able to see websites you don’t want them to see, and you won't be able to see reports of their online activity.

Step 6: Verify your setup

Click Next and you’ll see the accounts that Family Safety is now monitoring on the computer.

Picture of the Family Safety Filter screen that shows monitored accountsSee the accounts that are monitored by Family Safety and what their settings are.

Customize your family’s settings

By setting up the Family Safety Filter you’ve got a good start on protecting your kids, but going to the Family Safety website to tweak their settings gives you all the bells and whistles. With the Family Safety Filter set up for the first time, your children will be monitored with basic web filtering (Family Safety will only block adult content), and activity reporting will be turned on.

To make it harder for your kids to see the things you don’t want them to see, you can go to the Family Safety website and change their settings, starting with the web filtering level. For younger kids, we recommend setting the web filtering level to strict so that little ones can only see websites that are child-friendly.

Here's how to customize your child’s settings

  1. On any computer, sign in to the Family Safety website with a parent’s Microsoft account.

  2. Click Edit settings under the name of the child you want to adjust settings for.

  3. On your child’s settings page, you can see an overview of their current settings, and choose what you want to adjust.

    Picture of the Family summary pageUse the Family summary page to see all of your family members, edit their settings, view their activity reports, and see if they have requests.

Set up web filtering

Busy parents don’t always have time to go surf the web and check out all the websites their kids might see. To make things easier, the Family Safety team reviews thousands of websites and assigns them to categories. The web filtering level you choose for your kids determines which of these categories they can view.

If you want to pick your own categories instead of using the preset levels, you can choose Custom. You’ll see a list of all the categories, and then you can choose what’s right for your kids. Under Web filtering, you can also make a list of blocked websites or allowed websites that will override the categories and filtering levels.

Here's how to customize web filtering

  1. Click Web filtering, make sure Turn on web filtering is selected, and then select a web filtering level:

    • Select Strict to block all websites that aren't child friendly or on the allow list.

    • Select Basic to allow websites except those with adult content and anonymizer websites.

    • Select Custom to allow and block website categories manually. To allow a website category, select it. To block a website category, clear its check box.

  2. Click Save.

    Picture of the web filtering pageTurn on and customize web filtering for your child, and be sure to save your changes.

Allow or block a website

If you want your child to use the strict filtering level so they only see child-friendly websites, but you’d also like to let them see a certain website that's blocked, you can add the website to their allow list. Or, if you want to block a website that's allowed by their web filtering level, you can add it to their block list.

Here's how to allow or block a website

  1. Under Allow or block a website, type or paste into the box the web address of the website that you want to allow or block.

  2. Select an option from the list, click Add, and then click Allow or Block.

  3. Click Save.

    Picture of the web filtering pageAllow or block specific websites for one child, all of your children, or your entire family.

What will my kids see?

“The website I want to see is blocked!"

Once you’ve got Family Safety set up, when your child logs on to their account to use the computer for their homework, and they try to go a website that’s blocked, they’ll see a page like this:

Picture of the screen kids will see when a website is blockedInstead of a website with inappropriate content, your child will see this page where they can ask permission to see the website.

If you’re at work when your child gets blocked from a website, they can email you a request to see the blocked website. You can open the Family Safety website from the email to approve or deny the request right away. Once you’re done, let your child know the website they wanted to see is now unblocked, so they won’t have any excuses for unfinished homework when you get home.

Here's how to view and respond to requests

  1. On any computer, sign in to the Family Safety website with your Microsoft account.

  2. On the Family summary page, under Requests, click (number) requests.

  3. To show any comments your child added, click the arrow next to the web address.

  4. Click the arrow next to Select a response, and then click Approve for this account only, Approve for all accounts, or Deny.

  5. When you're done responding to requests, click Save.

    Picture of the contact management page where you can review requests from your childrenYou can review your children’s requests and approve or deny them.

"What websites can I see?"

The Family Safety Kids' Sites website is a great place for young children to start on the web. The website has links to the most popular of the more than 8,000 websites Microsoft has categorized as child-friendly. There’s also a Search these sites box where kids can search only those websites that are child-friendly instead of the whole Internet. To make it easier for your kids to find child-friendly websites, you can set your web browser’s home page to the Family Safety Kids' Sites website.

Here's how to change your child's home page to the Kids' Sites website in Internet Explorer

  1. On each computer your child uses, log on to their account.

  2. Open Internet Explorer, and then go to the Family Safety Kids' Sites website.

  3. In Internet Explorer , click Tools, and then click Internet Options.

  4. On the General tab, under Home page, click Use current, and then click OK.

    A picture of the Family Safety Kids’ Sites website with links to child-friendly websitesThe Kids’ Sites website is a great place for kids to start their web surfing.

Check out what your kids have been up to on their computer

With activity reporting turned on, you can monitor what your kids are doing online and on their computers. The Family Safety Filter keeps track of what they do and save the information on the Family Safety website for you to look at.

Here's how to turn on activity reporting

  1. On any computer, sign in to the Family Safety website with your Microsoft account.

  2. On the Family summary page, click View activity report next to the name of the child you want to turn activity reporting on for.

  3. Select Turn on activity reporting.

  4. Click Save.

Once you’ve been using Family Safety for awhile with activity reporting turned on, you can use the Family Safety website to look at reports of what your kids have been doing online. There’s information on the websites they’ve gone to or tried to go to, how much time they’ve spent on the computer, what games they’ve played, and more.

Here's how to view activity reports

  1. On any computer, sign in to the Family Safety website with your Microsoft account.

  2. To view reports of your child's web activity, do one of the following:

    • To see a list of websites that your child has visited or tried to visit since activity reporting was turned on, click Web activity.

    • To filter the list of websites shown, select the computer, account, and date range you want, and then click Show activity. To sort the list of reported websites by a particular column, click the column header. To show only the websites that were blocked, click Show blocked activity only.

      If you don't see any activity listed, try entering a larger date range, and then click Show activity.

    Picture of an activity reportSee what websites your kids visited, or tried to visit.

  3. To see a list of websites accessed by non-browser programs, such as auto-updater programs, click Other Internet activity.

  4. To view reports of your child's computer activity, do one of the following:

    • To see a list of times your child used the computer, click Computer activity, and then expand Sessions.

    • To see which programs your child used, click Computer activity, and then expand Programs.

    • If you don't see any activity listed, try entering a larger date range, and then click Show activity.

    • To see which files your child downloaded, click Computer activity, and then expand File downloads.

    • To see which games your child played, click Computer activity, and then expand Games.

    Picture of the Computer activity tab where you can see what your child did on the computerSee what programs your child used, and how long they were on the computer.