Windows 10 Family Safety - Time warning / Add more time

Hi Josip,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community.

We would be glad to help you with the issue you are facing today. I understand the difficulty with the problem.

Method: 1

I would suggest you to run automated troubleshooter has been created to make it easier to fix these issues.  You can run the Family Safety Troubleshooter by clicking this link.  This will fix any corrupt files. After running the troubleshooter, your settings will be downloaded again from http://familysafety.microsoft.com the next time you sign in.

Also refer to the below link.

Family Safety: Frequently Asked Questions

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wiki/windows_other-security/family-safety-frequently-asked-questions/5672f7b2-e3c0-498a-9a6c-c9cab39f68e5

Set up family safety features.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/set-up-family#set-up-family=windows-10&set-up-family-safety=windows-10

Hope this helps in resolving the issue. If issue persists, do get back to us. We will be happy to assist you.

Thank you.

I have also one of the issues mentioned above: Windows 10 Family Safety time out doesn't have an add more time button like Windows 8/8.1.

If Microsoft does not add the option to add more time when the time has expired like in Windows 8/8.1, then Family Safety becomes utterly useless to me and my family.

I agree that it would be very helpful to have a warning pop up to let the user (child) know that they are just about out of time.

My 10 year old son expressed frustration when he was in the middle of the game and Windows 10 locked him out without any warning and with no ability to save.

My wife points out that, when school starts and the kids are potentially writing papers or doing other schoolwork, it would be a big problem if Windows 10 shuts them out before they have an opportunity to save their work!

In looking over the documentation provided by Mohammed AliAli, I did not see any mention of a "time's almost up" warning, indicating that this is built into Windows 10 or that cleaning up and reinstalling the files, as suggested, would solve that problem.

This is a big oversight!

Additionally, in reading the links provided by Mohammed AliAli, I see that Microsoft acknowledges that a child can use up all of their screen time on one machine, but then immediately log in to another machine and that their consumed screen time has not transferred over?!  This seems like a pretty glaring oversight.  I have no doubt that my kids will figure out this loophole pretty quickly.  I am not a computer programmer, but it seems to me that if we had to go to all the trouble to create Microsoft logins with attached email addresses for our kids, and the computer looks at that information each time the child logs in, it should be no great leap to see how much time they have left for the day.

These both seem to be pretty basic requests that I believe functioned quite well in the Windows 8 environment.  If they had been "overlooked," please add them back in.  If they were intentionally left out, I would appreciate knowing the rationale.

Thanks.

How can I give my child more screen time when they have used up the daily allowance?  No buttons to do this, and logging on to the account.microsoft.com website is broken. (Fails with some "trace id" message.)

 I have tried switching it off on her account, but still doesn't let her log in.

I suggest that all concerns/problems with the Family Safety procedures should be reported direct to Microsoft using Windows 10's built in Feedback app.  It's the best way to raise these concerns with the 'Developers'.  You might even find there are already suggestions there that you could 'up-vote', to increase their priority level.

Hi Mohammed,

Thank you for your reply.  Unfortunately your reply did not answer any of my questions.

The troubleshooter link you provided is not compatible with my version of windows (Windows 10).

I've followed instructions you provided in other threads to delete the files from the computer so they're re-downloaded and they proved to not help.

As for the links you provided with frequently asked questions, and how to set up family safety, they don't answer my questions either.

My family safety works fine as in, it abides by the time restrictions given.. My issue is that no warning is provided that their time will be up, and no time to extend their time for that one occurrence.

I'll rephrase my questions..

In Windows 10, do we have the option to 

1. Have Windows provide a warning to the child stating that their time is almost up

2. provide the child with additional time for this one instance when their time is up.  

These were both working "features" in 8/8.1..  

Here's some screenshots of 8.1 for your reference which are now missing in Windows 10.

Warning message:

http://www.safekidsonline.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/family-safety-lock-out-warning.jpg

Get more time (You'll notice the get more time button):

http://www.groovypost.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Time-Limit-Message.jpg

And for those wondering, i did also provide my feedback on the site and through the Windows app (i upvoted anothers post since it was exact issue)

Hi Josip,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community.

We would be glad to help you with the issue you are facing today. I understand the difficulty with the problem.

Method: 1

I would suggest you to run automated troubleshooter has been created to make it easier to fix these issues.  You can run the Family Safety Troubleshooter by clicking this link.  This will fix any corrupt files. After running the troubleshooter, your settings will be downloaded again from http://familysafety.microsoft.com the next time you sign in.

Also refer to the below link.

Family Safety: Frequently Asked Questions

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wiki/windows_other-security/family-safety-frequently-asked-questions/5672f7b2-e3c0-498a-9a6c-c9cab39f68e5

Set up family safety features.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/set-up-family#set-up-family=windows-10&set-up-family-safety=windows-10

Hope this helps in resolving the issue. If issue persists, do get back to us. We will be happy to assist you.

Thank you.

You're not actually using Windows 10 Family Safety, are you?  

You have NO IDEA...

Hi Josip,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community.

We would be glad to help you with the issue you are facing today. I understand the difficulty with the problem.

Method: 1

I would suggest you to run automated troubleshooter has been created to make it easier to fix these issues.  You can run the Family Safety Troubleshooter by clicking this link.  This will fix any corrupt files. After running the troubleshooter, your settings will be downloaded again from http://familysafety.microsoft.com the next time you sign in.

Also refer to the below link.

Family Safety: Frequently Asked Questions

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wiki/windows_other-security/family-safety-frequently-asked-questions/5672f7b2-e3c0-498a-9a6c-c9cab39f68e5

Set up family safety features.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/set-up-family#set-up-family=windows-10&set-up-family-safety=windows-10

Hope this helps in resolving the issue. If issue persists, do get back to us. We will be happy to assist you.

Thank you.

Dear Mohammed,

I know you are trying to help, but unfortunately your answer is not helpful. Actually it comes over as patronizing because it is obviously not the solution to the problem.

Like a lot of parents out there I used the "Add more time" dialog to control how much PC time my son gets a lot. Without it, Family Safety is, not just almost, but utterly useless to me.

Do you have in fact have any insight into why the dialog is missing in Windows 10 and if Microsoft plans to bring it back?

Thankfully yours,

Erik

Totally agree - I have no intention of logging into the Family safety webesite and changing my daughter's settings just to give her an extra 15 minutes of time to do her homework - this just isn't practical and if I did do it I would almost certainly forget to waste more time logging in again later to change it back .  Totally ludicrous!  What on earth were Microsoft thinking when they came up with this rubbish!

Other userful features broken in Windows 10 Family Safety are the inability to control applications/apps/websites that have not been used yet - so I need to wait for my daughter to stumble on an innappropriate website or use an app I don't want her using before I have the option to disable them?  What kind of nonsense is this?  So the new improved version of Family Safety involves a strategy of "closing the door after the horse as bolted!"  Utter and total nonsense. What used to be a useful tool for controlling my kids' access to Windows, and feeling safe to trust they wont come to any harm, has now become next to useless, if not totally useless.  I simply can't believe an OS upgrade can result in a huge downgrade of such an important part of Windows (one which used to set it apart from Apple and Android - and now doesn't)!

..And settings used to span multiple devices, and are now device specific.  So any children with access to more than one Windows device can now just device-hop to get around screen time restrictions!!!

..... And what is with forcing young kids to have an email!  How dangerous is this?  What on earth is wrong with Microsoft?  My children are far to young to be using email, so I've had to create dummy accounts they have no access to, just so they can logon and I can use the grossly downgraded family safety.  And this in turn means they can no longer log on by clicking on their icon!

.......And you used to be able to control when during the day children could use the computer - but its now a blanket start/stop time.  I used to block out time at some times of the day to stop my kids using their PCs when they had other things to be doing (chores etc), and this has now gone too?  Sigh.  And there's more......

........... And why after upgrading toWindows 10, didn't my children's previous settings get carried across?  My daughter went 10 days with no controls at all on her PC before I noticed Family Safaty had stopped working.  This is a critical security and safety feature and it was simply disabled by the upgrade to Windows 10 with no warning on either the kids's PCs or via the Family Safety website!

What on earth is going on at Microsoft!!!!!   Come on, stop trying to wrap this utter rubbish up as some kind of improvement - its totally awful and makes a joke out of what used to be a great feature, and it needs to be fixed as soon as humanly possible!