Setting Parental Controls in iTunes

1820 days ago in How do I? by Brent | 7 Comments

People are always complaining about how parents are not aware of what their children are into, now iTunes offers a way to get involved. Parents, guardians, and older and more responsible brothers and sisters can utilize iTunes Parental Controls to restrict content. So people can restrict explicit content from being displayed in the iTunes store. Additionally, it is possible to disable podcasts, radio content, the iTunes Store, and shared music so that these items don’t appear in the Source pane.

Setting Parental Controls (from apple.com)

To set parental controls on your computer, follow these steps:

1. In iTunes, open iTunes preferences. Mac users: From the iTunes menu, choose Preferences. (Windows users: On the Edit menu, click Preferences.)
2. Click the Parental tab.
3. Select the checkbox next to any item you wish to disable or restrict.
4. iTunes 7 or later only: To change a rating level of TV Shows or Movies choose a rating level from the pop-up menu.
5. Click the lock icon to prevent users from making changes.
6. Type your administrator password in the resulting dialog, then click OK (You’ll need to know the administrator’s account name and password).
7. Click OK to close iTunes preferences and have your changes take effect.

P.S. Warning, opinion following … If you really want to get involved in your kid’s life, talk to them, be real, and spend time with them. Hey, even let them know that you have set restrictions on iTunes and explain to them why you’ve done this. Hopefully it is not because you don’t trust them, but because you care for them! They will definitely respect you for this, even if they do not show it.