Nintendo Switch Parental Cont… Reviews

by Furrever

I was super excited to learn that the Switch had parental controls. Unfortunately the options are severely lacking, rendering useless the parental control feature. As others have mentioned, the inability to set parental controls (time limits, content ratings) for individual users is a complete non-starter. My next thought was to set a combined time limit for the whole family, and then use NintendoSwitchParentalCont to monitor whether family members were self-managing and splitting the time equitably. This too is not possible, as NintendoSwitchParentalCont ’s accounting of time per user is wildly inaccurate. Lastly, it would be nice if two instances of NintendoSwitchParentalCont could be linked to the same Switch console (e.g. both mine and my wife’s iPhones) for co-parent monitoring.

Assuming Nintendo fixes all of the above, NintendoSwitchParentalCont could actually fulfill its assumed promise. From there it would be amazing to also be able to set parental controls for my kids’ Nintendo 3DS consoles using this same app. Even cooler would be if screen time limits per kid were enforced cross-device, which would allow parents to mange total daily screen time regardless of which Nintendo device their kids are using. After all, what’s the purpose of making parents establish Nintendo accounts and IDs for each kid if not to ultimately provide features like this? Or is it just so Nintendo can track, profile, and sell stuff to my kids? Disappointing.

by No, Mimi

Not being able to change the 6:00am start time after which the switch can be played during the day (like it does for the other end of the day when using the bedtime feature) has led to morning battles like no other in my household. Video games are pretty much the worst thing for my son to get into at the start his day. “Honey, time to turn off the game and eat breakfast, brush teeth, get dressed, and go to school!”—That doesn’t work on my kid (wouldn’t have worked on me either—lots of kids struggle with transitions). Having to hide it from him every night is a hassle and I don’t always remember to do it.

I would give it five stars if I could restrict game time to after school only. I really fault Nintendo Nintendo for failing to include this obvious feature, especially by now when lots of people have asked for it. When I try to imagine why they would not, by now, have added this, it brings to mind Silicon Valley parents who don’t permit their own children to use the products they create, but are comfortable marketing to other people’s children.

by Mom8373

Not user friendly & difficult to connect child’s account with parent’s account. I can supervise and see the Switch activity but my kid’s account still won’t show up in the family group. And then the parent account can’t change anything on the child’s account without going through the child’s email and account. I can’t change my kid’s password (the account won’t accept the password we set months ago) without going through his email and without him being in the family group, so I’m stuck in a loop. Parent should be able to make all changes on the child’s account through the parent’s email/ contacts. Also, everything should be done through NintendoSwitchParentalCont in the parent’s account, and you should not have to go from NintendoSwitchParentalCont to online to do the basic functions. If you’re going to have an app, make it be the one place to do everything please.

by Rcky.Dogmeat

EDIT: after reading other reviews I’m changing my rating to one star. The issues are obvious, there is no excuse for Nintendo to have not addressed these issues. The lack of password protected accounts with individual time settings renders NintendoSwitchParentalCont completely useless, and my other complaint (the timer still counting while game is paused on the home screen) is a distant, yet valid, concern.

I was super excited for the features of NintendoSwitchParentalCont but the actual user experience is a little lackluster. I wish there were a way to add a time limit per user, since I have more than one child using the device, and their timer still counts down while a game is paused or even on the home menu. If I need them to do a quick task I’m either making them lose some screen time or waiting for a chore to get done before they can conveniently close their game. I do love the intention and it does work well otherwise, just a few minor tweaks would make this a 5 Star app.

by Brit1224

There are multiple reasons NintendoSwitchParentalCont needs to be fixed ASAP. If I set alarms, my son can only play within that wi Dow. But if for some reason I’d like to change his start and end times the day of, the switch will not update those settings. I’ve noticed that the settings will be set after midnight each night. But, I am unable to change any settings within the same day. Nintendo should most definitely allow the parent to set:
🔸Start and end times and within the day
🔸Volume control
🔸Notifications when child starts and stops playing
🔸Disabling switch if the passcode to turn off parental controls is attempted
🔸to have a start time at ANY time within the day that works for my family. Not what works for Nintendo app creators.
🔸 ability to pause play or shut down all play in that moment if necessary
🔸the ability to choose ANY amount of time that I allow him to play.

Because these settings are not available or the switch will not update once I’ve saved all of my edited settings, I have to disable all alarms in order for my son to be able to play. So now there is NO end time or time limit of play. This is sooo frustrating. I try to limit my son to 2 hours of play at the very most. Most days it’s one hour. He earns time depending on his jobs completed at home.
The options are very limiting to the parent.

by Ezziemas

Problem #1: No user level customizations : everything is global. Time controls, content allowed, everything is set across all users on the system indiscriminately. I want to set passwords for each user account, and set up each user to be able to access ONLY the games I want them to access. They should not even see game icons of games they are not allowed to access

Problem #2:
Play time is global across all users. In a house with 3 players of different ages and only one console there MUST be ways to set time limits on an individual player level. I know I can just enter my password to keep playing once time runs out BUT I shouldn’t have to do this if I’m playing under my account (the parent’s account)

Problem #3 game visibility on home screen. Maybe there are games that I want to play that I don’t want my 5 year old to see even the icon of. Why can’t I hide my game activity from my kids?

NINTENDO PLEASE FIX THIS! I’m not the only one asking for these features!

This system you have set up only works if EACH player in a household has their own switch console! That is unrealistic for many families! Having one device to share is the reality in my house and many many other homes. QUIT being greedy Nintendo and give us the level of control we need to make our ONE console work for us as a family.

by Cathy9612

Two issues. 1. The purpose of setting parental controls is so that you can tailor them to the individual person. NintendoSwitchParentalCont only allows for the control of the device. This is our family device and I won’t be buying multiple so I can control my kids’ access individually. I don’t want to put controls on four people when I just want to restrict the usage individually for each family member dependent on earning time to play on it (school grades, helping out at home, general free playtime).
Issue 2. The use of the PIN. If my kid goes on my phone and into NintendoSwitchParentalCont , the PIN is displayed, so not only can they change the parental settings that I have set, but also go on the Switch, enter the PIN I’ve chosen and then they can use the switch for as long as they want and gives them an override for everything that I’ve set up.
Nintendo, it seems like you could come up with something far better. Everyone complains that kids are addicted to video games and don’t do anything else, just like the cigarette manufacturers you should have some kind of obligation to lessen and assist with the regulation of this addiction

by Sean'siPad111

I allowed my kids to browse the Nintendo Switch eShop and found that ALL Switch games were being displayed, including numerous M (Mature) games. Those “M” games have provocative graphics in the eShop even if you don’t click on them - eg the depictions of women for Grand Theft Auto (GTA).
So I downloaded NintendoSwitchParentalCont, in hopes that I could allow my kids to browse a version of the eShop in which only games appropriate to their age level are displayed.
I set everything up and selected the option to restrict viewing in the eShop. To my dismay, the M games (and their provocative imagery) are still displayed when my kids browse the eShop, on their account! All that the “restriction” does is block a kid from seeing any MORE information about one of those games. For example, if I browse the eShop using my daughter’s account, GTA is still displayed right at the top of the eShop (with the image of the 3 scantily clad women); if I click on it, the eShop displays a screen saying sorry, you can’t go any further, this content is restricted. That’s all that the “restriction” accomplishes.
If I enable restrictions, the eShop should not even display the restricted titles. At all. !!!!!
Come on Nintendo, I expected so much better from you.

by Andria27

So many problems with NintendoSwitchParentalCont. It was clearly designed by a gamer and not a parent.

What NintendoSwitchParentalCont needs:

- Clear start and end times that account for all 24 hours of the day. I should be able to say my kids can play from 4pm - 6pm on Mondays. And 10:00 am to 12:00 pm on Saturdays.

- The shut off time controls start at 4pm. This means my kids know that they can sneak downstairs and play after midnight if I haven’t forgotten to set the allowed play time to 0.

- There should be a clear and easy way to shut off the games when playing. You can’t. The only way is to physically turn it off.

- if you enter the PIN to bypass the controls on the physical switch, there is no way to set time limits after that. My kids will bring me the Switch and ask me to unlock it with the PIN. If I give them 30 mins of play time on NintendoSwitchParentalCont , it will shut off, but if you enter the PIN on the switch, they have unlimited time. You can’t then set a time limit on NintendoSwitchParentalCont .

- The whole UI is kludgy. It feels like whoever was given the job to create NintendoSwitchParentalCont didn’t think it through, isn’t a parent, and had zero interest in actually making something useful.

- controls are easily bypassed by kids. It’s a joke. Sometimes I just take the switch away for months at a time because I’m sick of dealing with it. My kids are too young to self regulate. So sick of fighting over time limits.

by Brolcz

I’m glad a parental control app exists, but I really wish a few features were included that were usually standard in these kinds of apps. (1) Account-specific settings. Right now, I can’t limit my 4 year old’s screen time without also limiting her older brother, my wife, and myself. They have different screen time recommendations, so this is very frustrating. (2) Add-time feature. The only way I can add time is by changing the permanent schedule, or deactivating the limitations and then remembering to reactivate it again. It would be good if I could just add an hour or whatever, without having to remember to change it back later. (3) Onset time. The Switch is intended to be an after-school activity for my kids, but they will get up before school and sneak out just to play it in the early morning, and there’s not anything I can currently do in the parental settings to stop them. I would rate NintendoSwitchParentalCont 5 stars, if not for these missing features.

by Jlott42

Nintendo, NintendoSwitchParentalCont is a great idea, but why can the settings not be set individually for each specific user? I can't give one child more playtime than another, restrict content more for younger children than for older children, etc. Your parental controls are great, but they need to have the option of being applied per user instead of being applied globally to everyone who plays on the same console. It is unreasonable to buy an individual switch console for each child and monitor them that way.

Until this ability is added I strongly contend that NintendoSwitchParentalCont is severely lacking. No business from our family will come until we can insure that this ability exists. We would like to purchase a switch when this issue has been addressed, but not until then.

Nintendo, can we expect this ability to come in a future update?

by Elc121082

NintendoSwitchParentalCont itself does work for the limited capabilities it has on it. NintendoSwitchParentalCont can tell you which account has played for how long as well as the games they played. Having this information; it shouldn’t be difficult in implement more restrictions into NintendoSwitchParentalCont .

It would be nice to be able to set up a schedule with multiple start stop times (kids can play before school, stop when time for class, play on lunch but not last part of school then allow after school til bedtime) but NintendoSwitchParentalCont is VERY limited and the only options is to either set a certain amount of time (which can start any day as soon as 6am) or you can restrict it to you then have to be available to turn it on with a PIN number every time which can be frustrating when you already have set times you want it allowed. Then there is the final cutoff for the day of bedtime.

Like I said; NintendoSwitchParentalCont does work and is appreciated vs the nothing that is on the system itself but there is so much untapped potential in NintendoSwitchParentalCont that I think Nintendo (or whomever developed this) just gave up on.

by Mom Seeking Balance

During COVID, playing with friends has become both an important outlet and a concerning pattern and need for my 12 year old boy. Among other things when it comes to helping him be balanced with gaming and school and physical activity and etc, I would like more control over setting a time window with start AND end times that stick. And somehow my kid seems to play through the limits consistently when on Fortnite.

Honestly it makes me want to get rid of the Switch to get rid of that stress and conflict in my life because the way controls are designed now he feels like I am an enemy, doing something to him. It would be way better if there were a way for him to participate in a healthy way. I do appreciate that the controls exist at all but feel like it’s an MVP. I find myself wondering …how might the super smart Nintendo designers enhance what exists and create a kid-facing approach to help them be a part of learning to self-manage and monitor? Pediatricians and child development experts are clear that 2 hrs of screen time is a MAX for healthy well-rounded children, across all platforms. Let’s all work together to make that more viable? Thanks for asking.

by Eg200809

Like many other reviews, I find I want more from the parental controls. I concur that not being able to set restrictions by player is frustrating. I also do not like the ease in which it seems my kids can get around the controls and continue playing. Mine have numerous times bypassed and turned off the controls. I hate that the controls automatically go away when NintendoSwitchParentalCont is deleted which my son has figured out is more effective than figuring out my pins. I know this is an issue with my kid and me but I also feel the controls shouldn’t go away because an app is deleted from my phone. We still have a login and I haven’t undone the controls. I also really hate how you can disable the alarms for the day but that you can’t reinstate them at all. And that you can set a bedtime limit but you can’t set a start time limit. While I understand that much of this control needs to be me stepping up as a parent and setting boundaries, the point of parental control features is to help automate those boundaries and help enforce them routinely. Please correct some glaring missing components.

by K8legr8

Anyone who has more than one player to a Switch this isn’t going to help, as you can’t limit time by user, just by Switch. Dumb. Just... lock the account after the set time Nintendo. Why is that so hard on the backend? If you’re doing this for one child, or yourself because you completely lack self control *waves* it works a-okay. Mine biggest complaint is that “bedtime” is between 4 and midnight. So if I’m up past midnight... suddenly I can access tomorrow’s playtime.

Self regulators: You can set your time limits and then delete NintendoSwitchParentalCont . I do this to make it harder for myself to extend the time “just another 15 minutes.” And it works wonderfully. Otherwise it’s pretty easy to bypass. (I’m not knocking the score for how easy it is to self bypass. That’s not it’s purpose.)

by Content Searcher

I like everything about the idea behind NintendoSwitchParentalCont and everything. My only thing is the same as other reviews… Which is that I wish you could set more specific time frames in which the Switch is locked. Like mornings between after 6am. If there could just be like a slider bar where we just set the times where the switch is playable or not, that would be AMAZING. I would definitely review at 5 stars if it had something like that.
Overall the features it does have are already worth it, time limits in general to help kids stay accountable and help parents track times is awesome. I especially like the organization of the data in daily and monthly views so you can see trends for goal setting and having an honest look at what is actually going on.

by Dad Is Too Strict

I’m glad that there are parental controls for the switch however I wish there were more options available, such as Microsoft Family safety app gives for computer use. It gives you option to set up time windows and duration for each day, and allows for time to be requested directly from a device after time has expired. Currently, since I don’t allow my kids play when they want I have all of the time limits set to 0 and have to manually go in and change the set time for that day and then remember to go back in and change it back to 0 after they are done. More detail when a password is tried unsuccessfully would be a nice feature too. Push Notifications tell me what time the attempts were tried but that detail is missing when you open NintendoSwitchParentalCont .

by AlleecatLB

Overall, I think the Switch parental controls are pretty good. They’re easy to use, and the interface is pretty intuitive. However, there’s no way to set a “start” time. If you set a bedtime, it automatically defaults to 6am for the start time the next day, and this can’t be changed. This is annoying if you want to keep your kids from playing before school (or DURING school, now that we’re all stuck at home due to COVID). I’ve seen this request frequently on different fora, but for some reason Nintendo hasn’t seen fit to add this feature. Until it happens, I’ve taken to hiding the switch from my two preteen boys during the day, until all their schoolwork is done, but having to work from home full-time, while overseeing my kids’ Zoom schooling, is already very stressful, and I hate having another thing to add to my cognitive load.

by Critina89

I love NintendoSwitchParentalCont because i can control how much my kid plays and what I can restrict. What I don’t like is the bug I noticed right away. I was testing it out and when I switched from a bedtime to NONE, it still was counting down 5 min on the switch, which made no sense. Also I keep getting error messages on my app which I think is weird. Anyways please fix these issues, check NintendoSwitchParentalCont for bugs nintendo!

UPDATE:
One thing I recently don’t like is that if I disable the parental controls on the switch itself, I can’t enable them from NintendoSwitchParentalCont . For example I disable the controls only so my son can play “fortnight”. But that also disabled the bed time and the game shutting off. I HATE this! I need it to be where I can disable for that game only but not the time limit. Nintendo please fix this!

by Adamoji

This is a great app that helps me control when my kids can play on their Switches. For the most part it works pretty well as expected. The one major feature that I see missing is the ability to set a "start time." For example, you can set a time which is considered "bedtime" and the Switch will suspend itself and the child will not be able to play anymore past that time. Which is great for preventing them from sneaking out of bed and grabbing their Switch and playing it. BUT, for some strange reason you can’t set up a start time, so if the kid wakes up at 6 AM and you don't want them to play until 8 AM too bad. They can wake up at 6 AM and play on their switch for two hours before you even wake up and there's no way to stop it. Please Nintendo add this feature and I will rate it five stars.

by Esparks

Restrictions are applied to the console instead of the user profiles. What does this mean? You can't vary restrictions based on the ages of more than one child. Once you give the child access to the console, there's nothing keeping them from playing as a different user profile. I don't want my kids to be able to access my game saves or play mature content, but this just makes parental controls painful to use. What I want is basically what Xbox does. You sign in at the start of a gaming session, and content is restricted to that specific user profile. For my kids to access my profile, they need a password. For their own profile, they only have access to appropriate content and they can request my permission for things they can't access. The Wii U even had separate profile access. I don't understand how Nintendo could hose this up so badly.

by  HAPPY CUSTOMER 

It is quite annoying that you can’t assign time limits to individual profiles. We (the parents) have to deal with the time limits we set for our two children just as they would, it’s quite annoying to have to turn it off then remember to turn it on when we are done using it. They should have designed NintendoSwitchParentalCont where time limits can be set individually. I feel bad for parents who have kids with a large age gap where you may want to allow an older child 3hrs while a younger child only 1hr. Good luck! We have ours set 1hr during the school week (Mon-Thurs) and 2hrs Friday-Sunday. Other than that obviously ball drop by the developers this is a great idea. The 2 ⭐️ rating is solely on the time limit but it’s such a massive miss it deserves to drop the average stars for NintendoSwitchParentalCont. I’m curious to know what others think about this design? 🤔

by TorturXperiment

I don’t see why Nintendo even wasted their time with NintendoSwitchParentalCont. It is essentially useless. Parental controls need to be able to be assigned to individual profiles instead of just the console as a whole. Also, the ability to put passwords on profiles and prevent the creation of new profiles is a must. If you have an older kid you have to allow your younger kids to play higher rated games or tell your older kid they can’t play the games they’re mature enough to play. What’s up with that? Parental controls as they are at this time are laughable and useless. It would be nice to see a resolution, but I don’t expect one as people have been saying the same thing since release and gotten no response. Crap like this is why Nintendo is dying to bigger better consoles. Just sell your titles already so real consoles can do them justice.

by Liquid Shadows

Nintendo, NintendoSwitchParentalCont is practically worthless since it only allows time controls for the entire system itself, rather than individual child accounts. This MUST be fixed! How am I supposed to allow one child a certain amount of time and another child, whom is much older, separate time limits?!? Also a password protected account on the console (for myself, being the parent) should be an option, 100%!

This is all kind of a no-brainer, and I would’ve expected more out of a company that is well known for being “family friendly”!!

Anyway, it seems you guys are just getting into the whole app thing & have some major updates to roll out... so with that being said, we will have to continue using other gaming devices until there is an appropriate update! Highly disappointed!

by Rcameau

I was pleased to hear Nintendo had an app that would help me monitor and restrict my kids playtime. However it doesn’t really work. Half the time it doesn’t log time they are using. Today for example, my son was playing for over an hour when I had it set to shut off after 15 minutes. When I checked NintendoSwitchParentalCont it said “no time logged” but I was watching him play. It logged 5 minutes of the day before and 50 minutes of the day before that so it does work....sometimes.

If kids are disabling the WiFi connection to get around parental limits (not sure if that is their game but it seems a good explanation) I would like a parental control option to tell the switch to stop working till WiFi is reconnected.

Related to that request, why isn’t there a parental control setting to disable the Switch unless the parent/guardian allows it through NintendoSwitchParentalCont ? I can only restrict time (down to 15 minutes) but I don’t want them to play at all till they’ve been useful (clean rooms etc.)

As Nintendo aims for a younger group of players, be aware that those of us who buy these consoles want them to be rewards but when kids play despite restrictions, it defeats the purpose and annoys your real customers, the parents who hold the purses.

by Self Employed Gameaholic

I am not a parent- but I am a 24 year old graphic designer who works from home and has a bad habit of staying up until 3 am playing splatoon. I was happy to see the switch had a bed time feature that would warn you of the bed time and then shut off the switch when that time comes. That would be really useful for me. Can’t do that tho :/ since for some reason you can only set alarms between 4 pm (who would do that??) and 11:45???? Why is there no midnight option??? Or 1 am? (which is my usual bed time) Again, I’m not a parent so I’m aware NintendoSwitchParentalCont isn’t made for me, but do people really not let their teenagers play past 11:45?? Idk this just sort of upset me. Guess I’ll just have to get some self control. (Like that will ever happen aha)

by Haze Titan

This is a pretty awesome way to track usage of your Switch remotely to make sure the kids are being honest about how much playtime they are getting in. It allows you to set either a subtle reminder that time is up (good luck with that) or have a hard stop that suspends the software. It even breaks the total playtime down by each user who was on for how long. Considering it already shows how much time each user plays, it is beyond me why you can’t set individual timers, and instead are only able to set one aggregate time for everyone.

This would easily be a 5 star app if such an ability was patched in, but until then I can’t say is useful for much more than seeing how one kid played the whole time while another barely played at all, after the fact.

by Raydog9379

Was great until my 9 year old son figured out how to disable it pretty easy thanks to his friends. He just deleted NintendoSwitchParentalCont and reinstalled it to kill the password/face access. Another way is that he went into my settings and just turned off the login via face feature... then bam, no password or face needed to access the controls. Then I wonder why he’s on the thing beyond the limits that were setup. Then he grabbed the pin for the switch itself via NintendoSwitchParentalCont since you can see it without a password and he changed the pin and at some other point he then deactivated parental controls. No controls is a non-starter. Well, now he doesn’t have a switch to play with for the time being....

by Xpl1dr

I absolutely love NintendoSwitchParentalCont. It lets you see what games were played, on which profiles, and set limits on both age restrictions for the rating of games you’ll allow your family to play, AND it lets you set the amount of time you’ll allow them to play in a day. You can set bedtimes each day so no games can be played after the set bedtime as well.

The only thing I don’t like is that you can’t control which profiles the limitations are applied to. It’s applied to every single profile on the console or none at all. What if I want to play after my kids go to bed? What if my kids sucked up all the play time for the day and now I want a turn?

Technically, I could just enter my pin and temporarily give myself access, but I don’t want to have that barrier for my own profile. I understand why they did it that way, but I’d rather have the option of choosing who the limits apply to rather than it forcing me to apply it to everyone.

Minus one star for that, but everything else is amazing.