macOS 27 Golden Gate expands the existing Family features parents and guardians can use to restrict their kids’ screen usage, with an emphasis on safety. (You must first enable a Family account and add family members in System Settings > Family.) These new features require that both the parents’ and kids’ devices are running iOS 27, iPadOS 27 or macOS 27 or later; if you haven’t already done so, a message at the top of the Family setting pane reminds you.
These features are described generally rather than step by step, because testing them requires a second device signed in to a child account.
Beyond those features, the Family pane offers a simplified interface that lets parents review their kids’ screen usage time, pause device use, temporarily lift restrictions, or change a schedule with just a few clicks.
Grant per-website browsing permission
For years, families have been able to use the Ask to Buy feature, in which children must have an adult’s explicit approval to purchase apps from the App Store. In macOS 27, this concept expands to include websites. If you enable Ask to Browse for a child, each visit to a website that’s not already approved pops up an Ask to Browse message on the child’s device. If the child requests permission, the parent or guardian sees a request in Messages showing the website in question, along with Approve and Decline buttons.
Ask to Browse works in Safari and other WebKit browsers, but not in Firefox or Chromium-based browsers, which means that any child who can figure out how to download an alternative browser can bypass this feature with trivial ease.
Enforce Communication Safety
Communication Safety is an existing feature that, if enabled, warns children before displaying nude images in apps such as FaceTime and Messages, whether those images are incoming or outgoing. macOS 27 expands this to block violent or gory images, giving the child a way to end the conversation without seeing the objectionable material.
Set time allowances and schedules
Parents now have detailed controls available for restricting when, and for how long, children can use certain types of apps (including games and social media apps). You can, for example, restrict your child to playing games for just an hour a day, or set up a schedule with fine-grained controls, such as “you can use apps A, B, and C before or after school, but only D or E while at school, and F and G only in the evenings.”
