Microsoft Family Group on Windows 11: Parental Controls Step by Step

Parent and child accounts

You need two Microsoft accounts: yours and your child’s. Family features work only with Microsoft accounts. A local Windows account has none of them, so if your child doesn’t have a Microsoft account yet, create one before you start.

Keep administrator rights on your child’s PC for yourself and give your child a standard account. Microsoft says it plainly: family features may not work properly if the child’s account is an administrator.

Step 1. Create the family group and add your child

You create the family from your own account. A person can belong to only one family group, so a child who is already in another group has to leave it first. On the PC itself, family members appear under Settings → Accounts → Family.

Follow the steps in Microsoft Support:

1. Sign in at account.microsoft.com/family.
2. Select Add a family member.
3. Choose the Member role, which Microsoft recommends for a child.
4. Enter your child’s phone number or email address.
5. Your child gets an email with a link to join. If they are under the statutory age in your country, Microsoft asks for adult consent.

Step 2. Connect your child’s PC

First, your child signs in to Windows with their Microsoft account, and the PC then shows up in their connected devices.

Then Microsoft tells you to open Settings → Accounts → Family & other people on that PC, select your child under Your family and select Allow. On recent Windows 11 builds the same list sits under Family.

While you are there, check the account type: select Change account type and set your child as a standard user. You stay the administrator.

With a new laptop, do the first setup yourself: whoever types their name first becomes the administrator. Our guide to setting up a Windows laptop for a child goes through it in order.

Step 3. Screen time

An overall limit for the PC is set at family.microsoft.com or in the Microsoft Family Safety app on your phone. Screen time keeps counting while your child is signed in, even if they walked away. Idle time does not show up in the report, though, so the limit can run out before the usage numbers suggest it should. Microsoft explains this in its troubleshooting guide.

On the website, the steps are:

1. Select your child’s tile.
2. Open the Windows tab (Xbox and mobile devices have tabs of their own).
3. Pick a day and set a time limit or the hours when the PC is available.
4. Use the check boxes to copy it to other days or to Every day, then select Finished.

Step 4. App and game limits

We suggest starting with the overall limit and adding a per-game limit only when one game eats the whole evening. Per-app limits live on the Apps, features, and games tab. Per Microsoft Support, you turn on App and game limits, pick the app, and set how many minutes a day it can be used and during which hours.

You can also block a program outright: open the three-dot menu next to it and select Block app; Unblock app reverses it. Microsoft applies app and game age filters only on Windows and Xbox.

Step 5. The web filter works in Microsoft Edge

In your child’s content filters, turn on Filter inappropriate websites and searches. From then on Edge refuses to open adult sites and Bing returns filtered search results.

Three more settings sit next to it. Only use allowed websites limits your child to your list, and Always allow educational websites lets learning sites through. You add addresses by hand to Blocked sites and Allowed sites.

The filter works only in Edge, which Microsoft names as the supported browser. To stop kids from getting around it in Chrome or Firefox, Windows blocks unsupported browsers. A parent can unblock a browser by hand, but sites in that browser are then unfiltered. We compare browser filtering in more detail in a separate article.

Step 6. Activity reports

Turn on the Activity reporting toggle in your child’s settings, on the website or in the app. Only a family organizer can turn reports on and view them.

A report has three parts: Screen time by day and week, Apps, features, and games, and Web and search with visited sites and Bing searches. Microsoft Support says web activity appears only from a supported browser, so browsing in other browsers is not reported.

If activity lands on the wrong day, check the time zone in your profile at account.microsoft.com/profile. An older child can switch reporting off: in the United States from age 13, and elsewhere the age depends on local law.

Where the settings stop working

We took these cases from Microsoft’s troubleshooting guide and from the steps above. Each symptom, with its cause and fix, is covered in Microsoft Family Safety not working.

Your child uses a local account. Family settings apply only to a Microsoft account, so limits and reports never reach a local one.

Your child is an administrator. Microsoft itself notes that an administrator account can bypass family settings and recommends a standard account. The same guide suggests a PIN sign-in, so your child can’t use someone else’s account.

Another browser has been unblocked: Chrome or Firefox then runs without the web filter, and its browsing stays out of the report.

A teenager turns on a VPN or boots into Safe Mode. Microsoft’s support pages describe no settings against these workarounds. We cover them in our guide to how kids bypass controls.

For a wider comparison of ways to limit a computer, see our articles on parental control apps for Windows and limiting screen time on a PC. If your child’s phone runs Family Link, our article on Family Link and Windows explains why it can’t reach the PC.

What Gardion adds on a Windows 11 PC

Gardion installs on Windows 10 and 11 as a separate program, and you set the rules from your own phone. It has a daily limit, separate weekday and weekend schedules and a limit for a single game too. On top of that, it guards against the usual workarounds.

While the website filter is on, Gardion closes known VPN apps so traffic cannot slip past the filter. It checks the time against a server and alerts you when the clock is changed. Gardion can be removed only with the parent PIN or a recovery code, and it restores its own files if someone deletes them. Gardion blocks forbidden sites at the Windows level, so the block applies in every browser, and site history is collected from Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Opera. Your child’s Android phone is managed from the same dashboard.

A standard account for your child matters here as well: an administrator can switch off any control program. Our parental controls for Windows page covers the PC in detail, and the installation guide walks through setup. Every feature is open for the first 14 days, no card needed. After that, Family is $25 a year for two devices and Premium is $35 a year for five. You can compare plans on the home page.