Parental controls & settings for YouTube Kids profiles & supervised accounts
A supervised account is a Google Account for your child where you can grant them access to YouTube Kids and/or a supervised YouTube experience. If you don’t want to create a supervised account for your child, you can create a YouTube Kids profile instead. YouTube Kids lets signed in parents create a profile for their child to use YouTube Kids on their own devices. YouTube Kids profiles can only be used with YouTube Kids. You can decide what YouTube experience is best for your family, and there are several parental controls and settings available.
When you set up a Google Account for your child, you can set up parental controls for YouTube Kids and/or supervised YouTube experience through:
- YouTube: Under Parent Settings in your linked parent account’s YouTube settings
- Family Link: Under “YouTube Kids” or “YouTube and YouTube Music” in the Family Link app
When you set up a YouTube Kids profile for your child, you can set up parental controls for YouTube Kids through:
- YouTube: Under Parent Settings in your linked parent account’s YouTube settings
- YouTube Kids: Under Parent Settings
View the parental controls & settings available
You can view and change the parental controls and settings for your child at any time using YouTube Kids, YouTube, or Family Link. There are also some settings that your kid can control.
Use YouTube Kids
You can view parental controls and settings for YouTube Kids profiles from YouTube Kids:
- Select the Lock
in the corner of your screen.
- Complete the multiplication problem or enter your custom passcode.
- Select Settings
.
Use your linked parent account's YouTube settings
To view parental controls and settings for supervised experiences or YouTube Kids profiles from your YouTube settings:
- Sign in to YouTube with your linked parent account.
- Go to your profile picture
.
- Select Settings
- Select Parent Settings.
- If you’re on a computer, select Manage settings for your kids, next to “Parent Settings.”
Use the Family Link app
Change specific parental controls & settings
You can tailor the YouTube Kids or supervised YouTube experience for your child by adjusting specific parental controls and settings. These controls and settings let you:
- Block or share content with your child
- Change your child’s content level setting for YouTube Kids or their supervised YouTube experience
- Note: You can also change your child’s YouTube Kids content setting to Approved content only using the YouTube Kids app.
- Turn off the Search feature for YouTube Kids
- Review your child’s watch history
- Note: You’ll need to use your child’s device to review their watch history.
- Clear your child’s history
- Disable autoplay
- Pause your child’s watch history
- Pause your child’s search history
- Turn on YouTube Premium benefits for your child
Block content:
Share content: Sign in to your Google Account to share videos and channels from YouTube with your linked child accounts.
- You can use your child’s device to block content directly in YouTube Kids from the home screen or watch page.
- You can sign in to YouTube with your linked parent account to block specific channels you don’t want your child to watch in YouTube Kids or their supervised YouTube experience.
Change the content level setting for your child's YouTube Kids profile from YouTube Kids:
- Select the Lock
- Complete the multiplication problem or enter your custom passcode.
- Select Settings
- Select your child’s profile and enter your parent account password.
- Select Preschool, Younger, Older, or Approve content yourself.
- Note: If you want to change the content setting to Approve content yourself, you’ll have to use the YouTube Kids app.
Change your child’s content level setting for YouTube or YouTube Kids from YouTube:
- Sign in to YouTube with your linked parent account.
- Go to your profile picture
- Select Settings
- Select Parent Settings.
- Select your child’s profile or account.
- If you’d like to change the content setting for their supervised experience on YouTube:
- Under YouTube settings, select EDIT next to “Content Settings.”
- If you’d like to change the content setting for their YouTube Kids profile:
- Under YouTube Kids Settings, select EDIT next to “Content Settings.”
- Note: If you want to change their content setting to Approve content yourself, you have to use the YouTube Kids app to make this change.
- Under YouTube Kids Settings, select EDIT next to “Content Settings.”
If you manage your child’s Google Account with Family Link, you can also change their content level setting for YouTube or YouTube Kids from the Family Link app:
- On your device, open the Family Link app
.
- Select your child.
- Tap Controls
Content restrictions
- Change your child’s content level setting for YouTube Kids, under “YouTube Kids Settings."
- Change your child’s content level setting for their supervised experience on YouTube, under “YouTube Settings.”
In this setting, your child can only watch videos, channels, and collections that you’ve handpicked. Collections are videos and channels grouped by topics, such as science and music, picked by the YouTube Kids teams or by our partners.
In this setting, your child can’t search for any videos in YouTube Kids.
To change your child’s content setting to Approved content only:
- Open the YouTube Kids app on your child's device.
- Tap the Lock icon
- Complete the multiplication problem or enter your custom passcode.
- Select Settings
- Select your child’s profile and enter your parent account password.
- Select Approved content only to turn on.
- Review the info in the “Getting Started” pop-up.
- Tap Select.
- Tap
icon on any collection, channel, or video to approve content you’d like to make available to your child.
- Select DONE in the red box at the bottom of the screen to exit.
You can restrict your child to a more limited set of videos in YouTube Kids by turning off the Search feature.
With the Search feature turned off, your child can’t search for videos. Your child will also be limited to videos and channels verified by YouTube Kids.
With the Search feature turned on, your child can search for new videos that interest them from the millions available in the YouTube Kids.
To turn off the Search feature, switch Allow searching to Off in Settings
If you turn off Search, the watch and search history for your kid’s YouTube Kids profile is cleared. Recommended videos and Watch it again will also be reset. Learn more about Search in YouTube Kids.
You can review your child’s watch history for YouTube Kids in Watch it again.
On your child’s mobile device or tablet:
- Tap Watch it again
at the top of the home screen.
On your child’s computer:
- In the top corner of the screen, select your child’s profile picture to view the Watch it again videos.
Note: Only videos viewed in YouTube Kids on that device will show up in Watch it again.
You can review your child’s watch history for their supervised account on your child’s device:
- Go to the My Activity page.
- Select “YouTube History”.
- Select “Manage activity”.
- Scroll to go to all past activity.
You can clear the watch and search history for your child’s account across all of their linked devices from YouTube:
- Sign in to YouTube with your linked parent account.
- Go to your profile picture
- Select Settings
- Select Parent Settings.
- Select your child’s profile or account.
- Select Clear history.
- To save your changes, select CLEAR.
You can also clear your kid’s history, and reset videos on Recommended and Watch it again from YouTube Kids:
- Select the Lock
- Complete the multiplication problem or enter your custom passcode.
- Select Settings
- Select your child’s profile and enter your parent account password.
- Select Clear history.
- To save your changes, select OK.
You can turn off Autoplay for your child by selecting Disable autoplay. Your child can’t turn on Autoplay when this setting is on.
To disable autoplay for your child from YouTube:
- Sign in to YouTube with your linked parent account.
- Go to your profile picture
- Select Settings
- Select Parent Settings.
- Select your child’s profile or account.
- Switch “Disable autoplay” to On.
To pause your child’s watch history from YouTube Kids:
- Select the Lock
- Complete the multiplication problem or enter your custom passcode.
- Select Settings
- Select your child's profile and enter your parent account password.
- Switch “Pause watch history” to On.
- To save your changes, select OK.
To pause your child’s watch history from YouTube:
- Sign in to YouTube with your linked parent account.
- Go to your profile picture
- Select Settings
- Select Parent Settings.
- Select your child’s profile or account.
- Switch “Pause watch history” to On.
To Pause your child’s search history from YouTube Kids:
- Select the Lock
- Complete the multiplication problem or enter your custom passcode.
- Select Settings
- Select your child's profile and enter your parent account password.
- Switch “Pause search history” to On.
- To save your changes, select OK.
To pause your child’s search history from YouTube:
- Sign in to YouTube with your linked parent account.
- Go to your profile picture
- Select Settings
- Select Parent Settings.
- Select your child’s profile or account.
- Switch “Pause search history” to On.
YouTube Premium Membership
Using YouTube Premium benefits with your child’s YouTube Kids profile:
You can use your child’s device to turn on and modify YouTube Premium benefits in the YouTube Kids app. You can also remove YouTube Premium from the kids app by tapping the Remove from app button. Removing YouTube Premium will also remove all downloaded YouTube videos on your device.
Using YouTube Premium benefits with your child’s supervised account:
To share YouTube Premium benefits with your child’s supervised account, you’ll need to set up and manage a YouTube family plan.
Background & offline
Tap Background play to set up the YouTube Kids app to play videos while using other apps or when your screen is off.
Turn on downloads to save a list of up to 24 videos per profile. You can watch downloaded videos when you aren’t connected to the internet. The app selects videos to download from:
- Recommended videos, based on your kids watch history, or
- If we don’t have enough info, by what’s popular on YouTube Kids.
Downloaded videos are updated automatically every 24 hrs. The Save over Wi-Fi only setting lets you conserve mobile data by preventing the app from downloading new videos offline while you’re connected to mobile data.
Change the storage limit and set the quality used for downloads. In general, lower quality videos take up less space on your device but may not play back as clearly.
