I’m really happy to see the parental control introduced in v2.2, and i don’t even have a kid. My use-case might be somewhat odd, but i’m looking to put more restrictions on my own access to the internet and apps, for the sake of my own well-being.
To this end, the current state of the Parental Control doesn’t quite cut it, but it’s very promesing. Being able to apply the restrictions i want to impose on myself from a password protected settings page, and only modify them from that settings page, means i can set things up as i want them, and then let a trusted familymember set the password, and BAM, doom scrolling just got a lot trickier.
Or well, it would if not for one limitation: the DNS used only covers adult content.
For my use case, i’d like to be able choose a combination of differens DNS as well as blocking websites on a per-domain basis; i want to restrict my access to youtube, netflix, twitch, and the like, but usually DNS don’t include alternative front ends like invidious, which makes it trivial to keep binging youtube for 4 hours. RethinkDNS seems like a great reference for this.
Other features like hiding apps, and locking apps, app installation and uninstallation would also be cool, but that wouldn’t really be necessary for my use-case if the DNS and domain blocking were to be implemented.
Anywho, i think it’s really cool to see any form of parental control (and in extention self control) features in e/os, and i’m curious how it could be extended in the future!
I installed /e/OS on a phone that stays at home for my kids to contact me when I’m not there. I set up parental controls, but the browser still allows access to inappropriate content on YouTube. I haven’t been able to find a way to block YouTube.
If the parental control has been introduced in 2.2, it will certainly be improved and extended in future releases. I think opening a thread for those ideas would be useful for the /e/ team, as they would know more precisly what’s necessary for their users.
It might be a good idea to add scheduled whitelisting or blacklisting of websites (and apps later), like www.freedom.to does. There’s a developer that did something similar and will probably be happy to share his work, here: https://pluckyfilter.com/
The above would be great, but would take some time to implement so it’s not a short-term solution. For the short-term, the 80/20 solution that gets most of the value / solves most needs in a quick-to-implement way, would be to hide apps: in parental control section, after entering parental code, select apps to hide.
This is quick to do and solves 80% of issues with mindless scrolling / inappropriate content or apps. With this, Murena phone is used for work / productive things only. Some functionality may be lost, but for people who truly care about blocking “media rabbit holes” it is well worth it, b/c one can do useful & needed things like school work, banking, ride apps, e-payments etc, but w/o risk of falling into a media / gaming “rabbit hole” and wasting a day.