If you have children, you probably know all about setting up parental controls. It’s annoying. It can be time consuming, and not to mention more than a little frustrating. Fortunately, Microsoft has an answer for that.
Recently, the development team has been hard at work putting a “Kids Mode” together that’s built into the browser.
It’s a simple, but surprisingly robust and effective solution to a problem you may not have realized that you had. Let’s face it, sometimes, you want to share your phone or PC with your child. Without kid-friendly filters built into the browser, the only viable solution would be to stop what you’re doing and set up parental controls on your own computer, then create a new profile for your child to use.
With this new browser functionality, you won’t have to bother with any of that. “Kid Friendly Mode” actually has two options. One that’s designed for children between the ages of 5-8, and another mode optimized for kids between the ages of 9-12.
While the particulars vary slightly between the two, both automatically utilize full screen mode displaying a family friendly background, and both include Bing SafeSearch auto-activated and quick links to popular kid-friendly sites.
Best of all, in order to exit Kids Mode, a parent would need to re-enter their password, so your child won’t be able to get around the friendly environment without your permission.
At present, the new feature is only available in Edge Canary, but will be rolling out to the Edge Dev channel in the weeks ahead. Even so, it’s well worth taking a look at the Canary build to get a sneak peek at the capabilities of the new feature. Kudos to Microsoft for this development. We expect that Google and Apple will be following suit before long. It’s a great addition.
