Windows 10: Xbox Announces Xbox Family Settings App to help manage children gaming

Brink · May 27, 2020

Safety is a huge priority at Xbox, and weâve worked for years to offer families tools to find the right balance of gaming in their lives and to fit their unique needs. Family settings on Xbox include more than 20 customizable features to help parents set screen time limits, set content filters and manage who their children can play and communicate with. This provides parents with the choice and flexibility to decide what settings are right for their children. Today, Iâm excited to announce an update in our safety offerings: the Xbox Family Settings app, available now in preview on Android and iOS, which makes it easy to manage family settings from anywhere. See here for more details.

The Xbox Family Settings app (Preview) empowers parents and caregivers to manage their childrenâs gaming on Xbox consoles through their mobile device. It provides a simple and convenient way to create child accounts and customize family settings on the Xbox console to ensure your kids have access to gaming that you feel is appropriate. The Xbox Family Settings app (Preview) includes helpful features such as:

Screen time limits â set limits for each day of the week, for example, you have the ability to allow for more time on the weekends or reduce time during the school week

Content filters â set filters based on the age of each child; an 8-year old can only access games rated E, and will be blocked from accessing titles that are too mature

Play and communication settings â block all access to play and communication with other players, limit access to âfriends onlyâ or grant permission for older children to play and chat with âeveryoneâ

Activity reports â view daily and weekly activity reports for each child to understand how they are spending their time on Xbox

With the app, parents and caregivers can respond to notifications in real time, such as requests from their child to extend the console screen time limit for the day. We have also built in a new feature within the app to easily enable access and multiplayer capability for Minecraft, which is rated E10+. Sometimes parents of younger children want to provide access to Minecraft and possibly enable online play with their friends, and a convenient toggle in the app unlocks those specific capabilities quickly. Based on customer feedback on this feature, we may include similar functionality for other games in the future.

Additionally, once the app is available to broad consumers later this year, parents will be able to view and manage their childâs friends list and approve or decline requests to add new friends via notifications sent to the app.

We know that especially right now, families are facing new challenges in the wake of school closures, working from home and social distancing due to COVID-19. In my own family, weâve had to navigate this ânew normal,â and how our existing rules for screen time might need to be adjusted to better reflect our reality. With the Xbox Family Settings app (Preview), parents can easily relax screen time on Xbox so kids have more time to play, or create a new schedule to help balance time for remote learning. We believe that especially now, gaming plays an important role to help connect friends and family and have fun while staying home. The app makes it easy to find the right balance of gaming time that feels right for your family.

The Xbox Family Settings app (Preview) is available now for all Android users and the first 10,000 people on iOS to test in preview. To download the Preview, go to: Xbox Family Settings (Preview) - Apps on Google Play and Join the Xbox Family Settings beta - TestFlight - Apple and then follow the steps to setup on your mobile device.

We encourage you to come along on the journey and share your feedback so we can further improve and refine the experience for all users. Weâre always listening to customer feedback, and more features will come to the app over time. We hope youâll join us!

Stay safe and healthy, everyone.
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Source: Xbox Announces the Xbox Family Settings App (Preview) to Help Manage Children’s Gaming - Xbox Wire

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Brink · May 27, 2020

New Tools for Cross-Play Now Available in Family Settings on Xbox Xbox

Here at Xbox, we see technology as an advantage for families today. It can be a positive force in the home and classroom, in personal growth, and in helping families and friends spend quality time together. We also know that it’s important that children learn how to build a healthy relationship with technology. We’re committed to making gaming a positive and inclusive form of entertainment, and with that goal in mind, family settings on Xbox ensures that gaming can be a rewarding experience for every member of the family. Over the years, we have continued to innovate family settings on Xbox to be as unique as families are today and support their needs.

So how can parents take advantage of everything family settings on Xbox has to offer? First off, parents will need to set up a child account at account.microsoft.com and link it to their Microsoft account. Once that’s done, parents have access to more than 15 comprehensive and customizable tools to manage their child’s account across four key categories: screen time management, purchase limits, content filters, and privacy. Let’s take a closer look:

Screen time management: Parents can set time limits and view activity reports to keep on top of their children’s activity. Limits can be set for each day of the week, meaning parents can restrict gaming on school nights or allow more time over the weekend.

Purchase limits: Parents can choose to approve children’s purchases before they are made, to receive alerts after each purchase, or to set up an allowance to limit purchases children can make on their own.

Content filters: Parents can filter or allow games, apps and websites based on the age of their children to ensure they are interacting with age-appropriate content. Children can also request access to content which parents can then approve or decline.

Privacy: Parents can set what people see about their child’s online profile, status and gaming history and who they can communicate with online. This is especially valuable with the increasing popularity of multiplayer games where users can interact with other players around the world. These settings can be managed via the parent’s Microsoft account at xbox.com/Settings.

We’ve also heard feedback and questions from parents whose kids enjoy playing cross-network enabled games. Available today, Fortnite is the first game to feature our new cross-play settings, which provides parents and caregivers with more choice in managing cross-network scenarios for their children who play on Xbox. This includes two new settings parents can turn on or off, which empowers them to allow or block both cross-network play and cross-network communication, on their child’s account. As with the rest of the family settings, these can be changed in the parent’s Microsoft account. We expect other cross-network enabled games will be updated in the future to include these settings and offer more choice for parents.

Of course, ensuring families have fun isn’t solely the domain of parents. To that end, we also empower kids to play an active role in learning healthy digital habits. Our family settings features include an activity report that kids can view so they are aware of their own gaming habits and, with screen time limits, kids can request extensions to their time on the console or PC, which parents can approve or decline. Kids can also use the Ask a parent feature to request permission to make app or game purchases in the Microsoft and Xbox stores, as well as request access to websites, apps or games. We feel that when kids are a part of this process, it provides a collaborative and fun gaming experience for everyone.

At the end of the day, communication is the most important tool parents can employ to ensure their family has a fun and positive gaming experience. We encourage parents to have an ongoing dialogue with their children about healthy technology habits and customize their family settings to fit their unique passion for gaming. If you’d like to learn more about our industry-leading Microsoft family settings and features, visit Xbox.com/family.
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Source: Family Settings on Xbox Provide Fun, Positive Gaming; New Tools for Cross-Play Now Available - Xbox Wire

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Brink · May 27, 2020

New App and Game Limits for Family Settings on Windows 10 and Xbox One

The new school year is well under way, and as families continue to balance homework and after school activities with screen time, Xbox is here to help. We’re continuously studying ways to improve children’s safety online and to give you, their parents or guardians, the tools to help ensure their wellbeing throughout their online interactions in the digital world.

Late last year, we detailed the many easy-to-use features built into your Microsoft account to give you peace of mind with family settings for screen time limits, purchase limits, content filters, and privacy settings.

Today, we’d like to share with you some of the additional steps we’ve taken to improve our existing family settings. We’re giving you more control over what your children see and interact with on the devices in your home, which is part of our commitment to make gaming a fun, inclusive, and safe experience for everyone. For us, that means offering tools that provide choice so families can create the right balance of screen time in their lives.

Improved Family Settings

We’ve updated our existing family settings to now include app and game limits to cap how much time your children can use specific apps or games. You can activate this feature across the devices tied to your child’s account, which is connected to your Microsoft family group. Creating a family group is an easy and important first step! The feature is currently available in preview release, and we are eager to hear your feedback so we can continue to refine the experience for your family.

For example, you can choose to set one hour of game time for Ark: Survival Evolved each day and two hours for Netflix. Prior to this, you could set broad screen time limits (three hours on Xbox One), whereas now you can determine what specific apps or games are playable or not playable within that timeframe. These app and game limits are shared across Xbox One, Windows 10, and Android via Microsoft Launcher devices and work on all child and teen accounts. You may be wondering about accessing websites through a browser. While the new app and game limits only apply to apps and games – which does not include the app’s website – you can choose to filter websites through the currently available family settings.

Meeting the Needs of Parents Today

In the past year, we’ve also updated family settings on Xbox to empower parents and guardians to enable or block their child’s access to play or communicate with players on other networks. You can modify this setting in supported games on any child or teen account (defaulted to off for child accounts). These features can be found under your Microsoft account on Windows 10 or Xbox One. Simply select the account you’d like to update, and then enable or block cross-play/cross-network communication.

These cross-play settings are currently available for Fortnite, Rocket League, Dauntless and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and we expect other games will enable them, as well.

We’ve also made it easier to set up a child account on Xbox One. You now only need to add your e-signature to provide consent for your child to have a Microsoft account — credit cards are no longer required for verification.
It’s important to us to continually update our family settings to ensure they fit the unique needs of families today.

Balancing Work and Play

Every Microsoft family account can choose to receive a weekly activity report — sent to both you and your child — which contains an overview of how much time was spent on apps, games, and websites. The activity reports provide transparency in how your children are engaging with Xbox One, Windows 10 devices and Android running with Microsoft Launcher and empower you to set limits and features that you feel are the best fit for your family.

When your child reaches the end of their screen time permitted for a specific app or game, they have the option to request additional time, which you can choose to allow or deny through your Microsoft account.

You know what’s best for your family; no technology can ever replace that. The right tools can help make parenting easier and family settings on Xbox does this by putting parents in control of what your children can access across the platform.
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Source: Introducing App and Game Limits for Family Settings - Xbox Wire

How to Set App and Game Limits of Microsoft Family Child on Windows 10, Xbox One, and Android

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Brink · May 27, 2020

New App and Game Limits for Family Settings on Windows 10 and Xbox One

Screen time is something so many families think about every day, including me, both at work as the product and strategy lead for family at Microsoft, and at home as a mother of two. I’m excited to share the next step in our efforts to empower families to strike the right balance of technology use in their lives with new app and game limits. Starting today, you can access this new feature in preview within our existing family settings across Windows 10, Xbox One and Android via Microsoft Launcher.

You may already be familiar with our existing device screen time feature, which allows parents to set limits at the device level. For instance, I can give my kids one hour of screen time on their Windows 10 PC devices, and another hour on their Xbox One console. Alternatively, parents can also choose to set a combined allowance of two hours, giving kids the option to spend it whichever way they want across both Windows 10 and Xbox One devices.

With the new app and game limits feature, we introduce two new key elements to screen time:

You can now set how much time your children spend within specific apps or games. Rather than a blanket time limit for time spent on device, you can now set limits at the app or game level, enabling you to be more specific with how your kids are spending their time with technology. This can be extremely helpful as parents struggle to balance the needed screen time for homework or education purposes when children use the same devices for gaming and entertainment.

The app and game limits you set will apply across Windows 10, Xbox One and even your child’s Android phone running Microsoft Launcher. We want to provide families the convenience of setting this up once, and letting it carry over across your child’s devices. This means one hour of Netflix per day is one hour of Netflix per day – my daughters can no longer pull a fast one by switching from one device to another.

One thing we learned from our research is that families tend to agree to different screen time allocations for weekdays and weekends. For example, you may want to allow your child to play a game until 9 p.m. on Saturday but want them done before dinner during the week. That led us to design the app and game limits feature with additional granularity to allow for both a variety of set time limits and different windows during which those limits apply, depending on the day.

Ultimately, our goal is for the app and game limits feature to provide flexible and customizable tools to meet each family’s unique needs. You as parents know what’s best for your children — no technology can ever replace that — but we’re hoping these tools can help you to strike the right balance.

To get started with app and game limits, and the many other family features we offer, the first step is to create a family group and ensure each child or teen in the family has their own Microsoft account. This is an important step for you to be able to manage their safety settings. We have recently made significant improvements to the child account creation, and credit cards are no longer required.

Once the family group is created, we encourage parents to have an open conversation with their children about their use of technology, how to empower them to learn and grow, connect with family and friends, play games and have fun; and at the same time, place guardrails to help them stay focused on their goals.

When children begin using an app or game, they are reminded of how much time they have. They will also get a reminder when they’re within 15 minutes of reaching the limit, and another reminder at five minutes, at which point they will have the option to ask for additional time. You, as the parent, can grant or deny that via email or more conveniently, via the Microsoft Launcher notification on your Android phone.

Starting today, you can access this feature in preview across the devices tied to your child’s account, which is connected to your Microsoft family group. The new app and game limits feature completes a large set of family features we’ve been developing over the past few years to empower families to develop healthy digital habits, including weekly activity reports – sent to both parent and child as a great opportunity to foster a dialog – content filters, device screen time, spending limits, child location and Xbox privacy and online safety settings.

Check out Xbox Wire for more information. We hope you will give this new feature a try and let us know what you think so we can continue to build experiences and tools that meet the needs of today’s families. (Go to any of the family web pages and click on Feedback in the bottom right.)
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Source: New app and game limits empower parents with more specific settings | Windows Experience Blog

How to Set App and Game Limits of Microsoft Family Child on Windows 10, Xbox One, and Android

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Windows 10: Xbox Announces Xbox Family Settings App to help manage children gaming

Xbox Announces Xbox Family Settings App to help manage children gaming

Xbox Announces Xbox Family Settings App to help manage children gaming

Xbox Announces Xbox Family Settings App to help manage children gaming

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