[German]Microsoft has offered a Windows a feature called "Microsoft Family Safety" since years, which allows parents to control what children can do with a system. This ranges from limiting the usage time to specifying which applications can be called up. As long as I remember, though, there's been a problem with this feature not working reliably. But hey, we have a brand new and fresh Windows 11 now, so the question is, does the Microsoft Family Safety feature work for you?
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I myself am out of need for such a feature – but I remember my active times as a community moderator in the Microsoft Answers forums. Every few days, since years, somebody would chime in to complain about faulty functionality in this area. Now German blog reader Marcus M. emailed me in early February 2022 complaining about that features not working. He wrote:
We use in our family for several years "Microsoft Family Safety", the built-in feature to restrict the screen time , eg max. 1 hour per day, etc.
This also worked with WIndows 10 quite wonderfully, but since the upgrade to Win11, the screen time limit no longer seems to work. My son's screen time was despite set max. one hour, but today he was using the PC three hours, but of course without complaining about that …
Also the time history in the parent account of the children shows nothing more.
It could be a single, isolated case. But searching the web brought me immediately to this Microsoft Answers forum post:
Family Safety Activity Reporting & Screen Time not working on Windows 11 PC
Family Group Set up correctly.
Child has non-Admin Account and Computer is Linked to her Account.
However Screen Time is always 0 even after hours of using Computer.
I have tried most of the suggestions in this forum to fix with no success.
The latest option I attempted was to remove her from Family Group to add her back in, but when I attempt this I am prevented with the following message "Family members under statutory age need an adult's consent to join a family group. Only the adult that granted consent for Skye can remove this family member. Ask the family organiser who granted Skye consent to remove Skye from the family group."
However I was the Family Organizer that Granted Consent, so this message makes no sense. Could this be symptomatic of the issue?
The answers given by the "independent consultants", can be dumped into the garbage can, ist just bull shit to keep people busy. Also the 2nd Microsoft Answers forum post draws the same image.
Family safety doesn't work after upgrading to Windows 11
I used the "limit screen time" feature in Family Safety to limit my PC usage. I created a new parent account and set my own account as child. This worked perfectly in Windows 10. It stopped working after upgrading to Windows 11, though.
Here are some things I've tried:
– Rebooting the PC
– Reconnecting the device
– Removing the child from the family then rejoining
Also, I don't remember the feature being removed in Windows 11. Any idea?
Several users confirmed the issue. So beside this "phantastic ever best Windows 11 of all time": Does anyone has managed to use this feature as planned or know knows a solution that is outside of "just use Linux", just leave a comment below.
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