Xbox parental controls guide – step-by-step guide to making sure your new Xbox One makes Christmas even better
Microsoft has some great tools and top tips that will help their all-powerful box a positive addition to your home this festive season
YOU might think that having bought an Xbox One as a present at a bargain price on Black Friday guarantees a great Christmas--but you're not quite done yet.
If you want to let whoever you've bought it for jump straight in on Christmas morning, and get off it again by the time lunch rolls around, you should take it out of its box now before wrapping it up and sticking it under the tree and set a few things up first.
The most important thing to set up is the parental controls.
These are much more powerful than they used to be -- and can really put you in control with the minimum of fuss.
Firstly, you'll have to set up a Microsoft account of your own, even if you can't imagine ever playing on the Xbox yourself.
If you've already got one -- from setting up Hotmail or Outlook, or to log into a Windows machine at home for instance -- then you can use that as a starting point.
MyView: 'It’s the time settings that really make the difference'
By CLIVE ANDREWS
I have two kids aged six and nine who are just starting to get interested in computer games. So after months of wrestling my phone off them to stop them downloading Fornite, I've decided to take the plunge and get them an Xbox this Christmas.
I was initially concerned I’d have to constantly police their gaming, but the Xbox's sophisticated family settings have removed that anxiety.
For a start, I can instantly block websites, which means they can’t stumble across any appropriate YouTube videos while I'm not in the room. And after entering their birth dates, unsuitable games are automatically filtered out.
But it’s the time settings that really make the difference. The fact that you can set a screen time limit as well as the hours of the day that use is permitted means they can’t burn through all their minutes in one block just before going to bed.
And the way in which they are denied access is pretty nifty too. When they’ve run out of screen time, they’ll get a message asking them to talk to me about it.
I’m hoping this will give me a useful bargaining chip. "Do your homework and tidy your room and I’ll give you another half an hour on the Xbox." Adding time is simple too. I'll get an email request and I can select an extra chunk of time from a list.
I’m not a computer game enthusiast... I’ve only ever owned one console which was an original PlayStation which I gave after six months because I never used it. So I was a complete novice when it came to setting up the kids' profiles.
But once you realise this is done on the Microsoft website and not through the console, it’s pretty straightforward. You just need to create a Microsoft account for yourself then add linked accounts for your kids. But if you’re a fellow rookie, I wouldn’t advise attempting this at midnight on Christmas Eve after a few sherries.
Instead, set aside an hour or two a week before the big day to really nail down all the parameters. Then add the new profiles to your family group via the console before you wrap it and stick it under the tree.
That way, you’ll avoid a Christmas morning spent huddled over a laptop with impatient kids snapping round your ankles.
Then you can set up your Family online. It's easiest to do this , where you can also set up and tweak those controls.
You can create a new account there for your child if you know they don't already have one -- or if they do, you can add them to your family as a child once they've got the Xbox, giving you exactly the same controls.
You'll start by setting their age to get a default set of age-appropriate settings.
Then you can customise it with a few clicks. This means you can stop them adding new friends without permission if you don't think they're ready for that yet, or give them access to video chat if you know their gran has Skype and would like to be able to talk to them using it.
How to protect your credit card
How to set up a passkey for purchases:
- Press the Xbox button to open the guide.
- Select Settings.
- Select All Settings.
- Under Account, select Sign-in, security & passkey. If you’ve previously required a password to change settings, you’ll be asked to enter it now.
- Under Sign-in, security & passkey, select Change my sign-in & security preferences.
- Scroll right and select Customise.
- Scroll right and select Ask for my passkey to make purchases.
- To turn this feature off, repeat this step and select Passkey not required.
A passkey is now required to make purchases on your account.
It's the screen-time settings where it starts to get clever, though.
Not only can you set a total number of minutes per day they're allowed to be playing on the Xbox, you can block off certain times just as easily.
So if you know you're going to be sitting down for Christmas lunch at 2pm, you can set it up so the Xbox stops them playing automatically fifteen minutes beforehand, then let them pick up again where they left off later in the afternoon.
It gives whoever is using it plenty of warning before just going back to the main menu and not allowing anything else to launch until whatever time you've set.
Screen time management - how to do it
To set screen time limits for your child on Xbox One and Windows 10 devices, use the online tool.
Go to and sign in with
your Microsoft account. Then:
- Find your child’s name and select Screen time.
- If you want to use the same schedule for all devices, switch Use one screen time schedule from Off to On. If you’d rather have separate schedules, scroll down and switch on screen time for PC and Xbox One individually.
- Set how much time your child is allowed to spend with their devices each day, and when they can use them. If you want to give them the full amount of time you’ve scheduled, select Max scheduled. (Example: If you’ve allowed screen time from 8 am to 8 pm, they could use their devices that entire time.)
No more wrestling controllers from their hands or fights over five more minutes -- once the time is up, that's that.
The timings are stored on the Xbox as well as in the cloud, so even if it's disconnected from the internet it'll still enforce whatever limits you had set when it was last online.
When they run out of time on any given day, you can then choose to extend it either from the console itself, or from any computer.
Log in with your account, and you can extend the allowed time at your leisure -- but only, say, after the dishes have been done, room tidied or dog walked.
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Because of the number of people starting up consoles for the first time on Christmas, servers can get busy and this process can be quite slow.
But thankfully, you can speed the process up considerably by setting it all up beforehand.
Just plug it all in and either stick the game in the drive or enter the download code if it's something like Fortnite that is only available digitally.
When you start it up for the first time it'll download all the updates it needs, and you can pack things back up again.
Then when they come to plug it in for the first time, they can just dive right in without the inevitable waiting and moaning you'd have to put up with otherwise.
You can also see through your account exactly what they've been doing on their Xbox or Windows PC--so if they claim they've only been playing Fortnite for 20 minutes and it's actually been three hours, you've got the facts in front of you to back you up.
Want more information? You can download the Xbox Family Settings guide here, check out the great , which has recently relaunched.
As well as the information you need about games your kids are playing, AskAboutGames also helps parents "understand more about the games industry and consumer relations to it."
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