By David Nield
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If you’ve treated the kids in your household to an Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S, you’ll of course want them to have fun — but you’ll also want to put limits on what they can do on the console, especially if they’re younger children.
These consoles are built with all the necessary options for adding child profiles and managing what those profiles can do. The features all tie into a larger Microsoft Family Safety feature that works across multiple devices, and it’s free to use as part of your existing Microsoft (and Xbox) account.
The level of detail you can go into is impressive, right down to which specific websites your child can look at. If you don’t want to configure every option individually, there are preset profiles you can choose from.
Before you can manage parental controls on the Xbox, you need to tell Microsoft who’s in your family. These family settings then apply across all of the Microsoft products you use, including Windows and Office.
To begin with, you need to log in to your Microsoft account page on the web. (While you can do this on your console, it’s much easier to do on a computer with access to a mouse and keyboard.)
From the account page:
The options here apply across all of the devices that your child logs in to using their Microsoft account, including phones, laptops, and consoles. However, options for the Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S won’t appear until you’ve connected a console.
You’ll then be prompted to sign in to your own account. You can either enter your login credentials on the Xbox console or have an email sent to your phone or laptop so you can sign in on those devices
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