Family Guard and Kids Mode

A parent PIN, content locks, masking, temporary unlocks, a session pause, and a simplified kids session.

About 6 minutes

Objective

Set up Family Guard, lock content, and understand how unlocking works.

Before you start

  • Any connected source. Family Guard is off for every new profile until a parent sets it up.

Steps

  1. Create the parent PIN

    Open Family Guard from the sidebar and choose Create a PIN. The PIN is stored only as a salted one-way digest in the macOS Keychain. Without a PIN nothing is locked. A lock without a PIN would be theater, so the first lock you create walks you through PIN setup.

  2. Lock content

    Use the single lock control on any channel, movie, series, category, or My Media item, or the Family Guard dashboard's searchable lock manager. A red lock means the item is enforced; a lock inherited from a locked category explains itself instead of silently adding a second rule. Free SlothMate includes 20 item locks and 2 category locks per area; Plus raises those.

  3. Choose masking and Safe Search

    "Mask locked content" hides locked items from every list; "Safe Search" keeps locked items out of search. Both are Plus presentation tools for adult browsing. Kids Mode always honors the stored rules regardless of plan.

  4. Unlock one item temporarily

    A locked item asks for the parent PIN and offers Unlock temporarily: the PIN authorizes only that channel, movie, series session, or file. The authorization ends when you change or zap to other content, close the player, leave the screen, switch profile or preset, or when SlothMate goes to the background.

  5. Pause protection for a session

    The Family Guard control in the top bar is the one deliberate whole-session switch. While it reads "Family Guard: On", clicking it asks for the parent PIN and pauses protection for this session; while it reads "Family Guard: Off" (paused), clicking it turns protection back on immediately, no PIN needed. With no PIN yet, it opens Family Guard setup. Rules and the PIN are never changed by pausing, and protection is on again after a relaunch, a logout, or a profile switch.

  6. Turn on Kids Mode

    Mark a preset as Kids Mode in My Categories. A kids session hides grown-up settings, purchase surfaces, source management, and lock controls; leaving it takes the parent PIN.

What it looks like

Captured from the real app over fictional data. No real accounts, playlists, or personal files appear.

Live TV with Family Guard on: a locked channel shows a shield and an Unlock channel temporarily button, and the top bar reads Family Guard: On.
Family Guard enforcing on Live TV: locked fictional channels, the temporary unlock, and the top-bar status control. View full size
The Family Guard dashboard with the PIN and session card, Behavior switches, and the lock manager listing fictional channels.
The Family Guard dashboard over a fictional catalog. View full size

Expected result

Locked items ask for the PIN everywhere: Live TV, Guide, Search, Home, Favorites, MultiView, and My Media.

Privacy and safety notes

Family Guard is a convenience tool inside SlothMate on this Mac. It cannot identify every inappropriate item in your own sources, does not restrict other apps or devices, and is not a substitute for macOS parental controls or supervision.
Screenshots use an armed fixture with fictional channel names.