Simple family device access control for Macs

June 30, 2019 2:02 AM

Is there a simple app or service to control or schedule internet access, perhaps for individual devices?

So our eight year old son got up at 6am today and watched TV on Netflix. While we don't mind him watching TV, we'd prefer he didn't get up that early and spend hours watching cartoons.

Is there some kind of simple app or software where I can control either access to the whole internet (turning it on and off) or individual items (such as an Apple TV). Ideally I'd like a service that me and my wife could use to simply switch the network (or devices) on and off. Having this as a timed schedule would be ideal as well.

I am aware of the timed network access settings in Airport Extreme but I could do with something more quick and easy. Happy to pay as well if there's good paid options.

posted by treblekicker to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Who is your ISP? I've got the previous generation FIOS router and it has that functionality via the web interface to the router.
posted by COD at 5:40 AM on June 30, 2019

Response by poster: BT. I haven't seen anything in their UI and frankly I wanted them to act as a dumb pipe. For instance there's a lot of posts of the web saying that they block Apple TVs. It's probably solvable to someone more technical than me but in the end I had to use an ethernet cable for it, which then made it work.
posted by treblekicker at 5:49 AM on June 30, 2019

The Google Wifi mesh routers can do this. You can schedule internet access for individual devices or groups of devices through a phone app. I've found it to be refreshingly simple to set up and use compared to the many other wireless networking hardware I've had over the years.
posted by pipeski at 7:55 AM on June 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

Oh, and the individual routers all have ethernet ports, so you can schedule access for wired devices as well.
posted by pipeski at 7:56 AM on June 30, 2019