Recommend a kid-safe browser for Mac?

May 18, 2014 7:39 PM

Can you recommend a good free or inexpensive kid-safe browser for Mac? I'd like to be able to whitelist certain sites. My daughter is currently 8 years old, but I'd like it to to be able to grow with her.
posted by moira to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Hmm, the way I've done this on a Mac isn't to pick a specific browser. I set up a separate account for her with some very stringent parental controls -- the ones built into OSX that you can access through the Users control panel. You can limit browser access to only whitelisted sites this way.
posted by Andrhia at 7:43 PM on May 18, 2014

Response by poster: Thanks for the suggestion. I've tried going through the Mac parental controls, and she gets continual error windows even for sites I've added. I don't know if I've done something wrong, but it's super annoying.
posted by moira at 7:47 PM on May 18, 2014

You could try using Chrome with the Stayfocusd app - it's designed to foster productivity, but could be used equally successfully to limit access to specified kid-friendly websites.
posted by littlegreen at 7:49 PM on May 18, 2014

As already mentioned parent controls in Mavericks is a good solution - http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14414 or http://macmint.com/how-to-setup-parental-controls-in-os-x/

but one option I really like is to use is OpenDNS to help control content and it works very nicely: http://www.opendns.com/home-internet-security/parental-controls/opendns-home/
It really is free for home use and quite effective. The reason I like this is it also solves for tables and smartphone use in the house.
posted by jmh at 7:55 PM on May 18, 2014

Give Chrome's "supervised users" feature a look: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/3463947?hl=en

You can setup permissions for the supervised user: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/3477268
posted by unionsquarepark at 8:46 PM on May 18, 2014

Fluid. It clones Safari, has whitelisting, and can separate cookies from Safari.
posted by davidpriest.ca at 12:11 PM on May 19, 2014