While the internet has become a must-have for the kids, especially during the global lockdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic, unattended exposure of kids to the internet world has become a security risk for innocent users as well. Addressing this issue, Microsoft has announced the launch of a dedicated “Kids Mode” in its Edge browser.
About Microsoft Edge Kids Mode
In a recent blog post, Microsoft has announced the launch of a new feature with its Edge browser – the “Kids Mode”.
As the name implies, Kids Mode is dedicated to ensuring a safe browsing experience for the kids. With this mode activated, kids can explore various browser features and surf safely. Hence, the parents don’t have to worry about the incidental exposure of kids to inappropriate stuff.
Explaining more about this tool, Microsoft stated that the Kids Mode will activate even without a child profile. Though, signing in with a child profile will help the users sync the settings across multiple devices.
As a parent/guardian, all it takes to enable this mode is to select the “Browse in Kids Mode” option from the profile switcher. When setting for the first time, the browser will further ask the user to select an age-range, “5-8 years” or “9 and older”.
Once enabled, the main browser window will close down and a new window will appear with Kids Mode activated. Once set, the browser will always open in Kids Mode unless the user manually chooses to exit the mode.
This will ensure that the browser remains safe for the kids’ use.
The Kids Mode bears custom browser themes, selective browsing based on an allow-list. The users can, however, amend the allow-list of websites as and when required. Whereas, to ensure safe searching, and a strict level of Bing SafeSearch.
Besides, exiting this mode is also not so easy since it requires the user to enter the device password.
While the new feature is really exciting for the users, currently, it is selectively available in the Canary Mode, that too, for the Windows and macOS Edge browsers in US English only.