You can control your child’s Xbox One screen time using Microsoft’s parental controls. It’s easy when you know how. Here’s how.

Before we start, we need to clear up what is an adult and what is a child – a slightly annoying but necessary aside.

You are a parent. Your Microsoft account will be an Adult. Your account will be the Parent to the other accounts that you want to control.

Your child’s Microsoft account can be a Child account or an Adult account. The difference is that with an Adult account you can choose the age rating that you want to apply, with a Child account the content will be limited to whatever the entered age is.

When you add a family member to your Parent Microsoft Account, the family members can be Adult or Child. However, you need to add them as Child (even if their own account is Adult), because if you add them as Adult then they will be able to change settings just like you can.

Got it?

So, here’s what to do:

1. You need a Microsoft account, this will be your Parent account. If you don’t have one, sign up here.

2. You will need access to your children’s Microsoft account email addresses. This is because the sign up process goes along the lines of you invite them to let their account be a Child to your Parent and they have to confirm via an email sent to their account.

Once you have the login details from 1 and 2 proceed…

3. Login to your Microsoft account here.

4. Go to your family either by clicking “Family” on the menu bar or by clicking here.

5.  Scroll down until you see “Add Family Member”, then click on it. Or try this link.

6. You should see a screen like the one below. Add the family members email address and if you want to be able to change their settings select Child (even if they are an Adult, see note above). Then send the invitation.

7.  The invitation will be sent to the person’s email address. They (or maybe you if child) need to click the link to be accepted into the family.

8. When confirmed in step 7, you are ready to change access settings. There are two ways for each child who appears on your Family page. Click the Screen Time link beneath their name.

9.  Way One. The time of day that they can use the Xbox or PC each day.

10. Way Two. The amount of time that they can use the Xbox or PC each day.

11. Just flick one of the switches. Whichever way you choose you will get pretty much the same options, but if you go for Way Two you can set up Xbox and PC time separately. You’ll see something like this:

12. Click on the “Max Scheduled” drop down to change the amount of time allowed each day.

13. Click on one of the time bars on the right to bring up a dialogue box to change the time of day that the Xbox or PC can be used. You need to do each time separately.

14. Enjoy!

Hopefully this has been of some use to you, feel free to leave comments below.