Johannesburg - Software giant Microsoft launched a new Family Safety app designed to help parents manage their family’s digital and physical safety.
The app will allow parents to receive reports on app usage and overall screen time. Parents can even set app time limits with the ability to allow children to request extensions when they have reached their time limits this can range between 15 minutes to 3 hours of more screen time.
Microsoft Family Safety will also work across Windows, Xbox and Android, meaning time limits for games and apps will be synced right across multiple devices. This was designed to prevent kids from tricking their parents by swapping devices to get extra time to play more games.
Family Safety app will offer parents to block or unblock specific apps and the company has added ‘location clustering’ to see when multiple family members are at the same location. The app also offers a purchase request email helping to prevent surprise spendings, the email request will notify parents before an item is bought by their children from the Microsoft Store.
“We are excited to launch Family Safety and we will continue to add new features to help you protect your family. In the coming months, we plan to introduce two premium features that will be part of Microsoft 365 Family subscription, drive safety, and location alerts” Microsoft said in a statement.
The two premium features which Microsoft will implement in the coming months are ‘drive safety’ which will help build better habits behind the wheel with insights on driving behaviour and ‘location alerts’ to help notify you when a family member arrives or departs a specific location.
Microsoft also added that they are in the process of working to bring digital safety features to iOS to set screen time and content filters on iPhones.
The Microsoft Family Safety app is available on Android and iOS.
IOL TECH