SEPARATE THE POWERS
Parent is Admin. Child is Standard.
In System Settings, open Users & Groups and create a Standard account for the child. Keep the administrator account and password with the parent. Yes, obvious. Also yes, field-tested.
FAMILY PILOT SETUP
About ten minutes, one parent password and one small handoff test. Do the boring check now. Avoid the exciting Saturday incident later.
THE INSTALL PROTOCOL
SEPARATE THE POWERS
In System Settings, open Users & Groups and create a Standard account for the child. Keep the administrator account and password with the parent. Yes, obvious. Also yes, field-tested.
INSTALL FROM THEIR ACCOUNT
While the child’s Standard account is active, open the downloaded .pkg
and follow Installer. Use the parent administrator password when macOS asks. The
package installs GG Time plus the root-owned guardian and supervised login agent.
DEFINE THE DEAL
Open GG Time and create the private parent PIN. Set the daily allowance and play hours. In Games & Limits, use Choose a Game… to add every app that should use the shared clock. Changes apply immediately. There is no Save button hiding in another dimension.
CHECK THE SHIELD
Open Settings and find System protection. It must report Protected and show that Force Quit recovery is active with a fresh guardian heartbeat. If it does not, stop here and reinstall the family package from the child account.
OPTIONAL REMOTE CONTROL
Open the TestFlight invitation on your iPhone and install GG Time Parent through Apple TestFlight. In GG Time on Mac, unlock Parent Access and create the five-minute pairing code. Open GG Time Parent on the parent’s iPhone and scan it. Parent changes use Face ID, Touch ID or the iPhone passcode. Keep the Mac online and check that a test reward shows as Applied before relying on remote controls.
TRUST, THEN VERIFY
Open a limited game and confirm the clock moves only while that game is frontmost. Reduce the balance to zero and confirm the game closes. Open it again and confirm it closes again. Finally, Force Quit GG Time once: built-in protected games should close during the gap and GG Time should return within a few seconds.
OPTIONAL APPLE BACKSTOP
Screen Time and GG Time are independent. If Screen Time is set to one hour and GG Time shows two, Apple blocks the app after one hour. GG Time cannot reopen it.
A saved coupon stays in the wallet until used or expired. Once redeemed, its minutes belong to today. Unused minutes do not return to the wallet and expire at midnight.
Recommended: set Screen Time as a higher emergency ceiling, then let GG Time handle the everyday earned allowance. A strict one-hour Screen Time cap requires a second parent approval whenever you want to allow more.
SET THE HARD CEILING
BEFORE THE LAPTOP LEAVES YOUR HANDS
Release: GG Time 1.2.9 (12), Apple-silicon family installer.
Security: Signed with Developer ID and notarised by Apple.
SHA-256: 94273a9ab44597fa16469993e810df005a46188454f39851f0f393cef09b95b9
System protection makes ordinary stopping ineffective. It does not make all child-owned settings and account data hack-proof. Keep Screen Time as an independent hard ceiling when that extra boundary matters.
READY PLAYER PARENT?