Microsoft Family Safety Blocking Chrome Browser

Hello, thanks for reaching out. I'm Ace, one of the Independent Advisors. I can understand your concern and please don't worry I am here to help you.

Microsoft Family Safety blocking Chrome can be frustrating, especially when it affects all versions of the browser. This issue is often caused by content restrictions within Family Safety settings, which may be preventing access to non-Microsoft browsers. To resolve this, check the Microsoft Family Safety settings by visiting account.microsoft.com/family, selecting the affected child's account, and reviewing the Content Restrictions section. If the "Block inappropriate browsing" option is enabled, it may be restricting access to Chrome. Disabling this setting should allow Chrome to function normally. Another possible solution is to reset Chrome permissions. If Family Safety continues to block Chrome despite granting permission, try signing out of the child's Chrome sync account and resetting the browser settings. This can be done by opening Chrome, navigating to Settings > Reset Settings, and selecting Restore settings to their original defaults.

Let me know if this method works.

Thanks!

To set some context here, Microsoft Family Safety Web Filtering works inside Microsoft Edge only. If Web Filtering is enabled, use of other browsers is blocked because the parental controls cannot be enforced. This has been this way for a very long time, but the team reports that this blocking was broken for a period of months and fixed on June 3rd.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/family-safety

How Parents Can Adjust Settings:

Go to https://familysafety.microsoft.com or open the Family Safety mobile app.

1. Select the child.
2. To allow other browsers:
   • Disable “Filter inappropriate websites” under the Edge tab, or
   • Go to Windows tab → Apps & Games → unblock Chrome.

See also: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/filter-websites-and-searches-using-microsoft-family-safety-3034d91e-5efa-9fbe-1384-46009f087ccf

I am having the same issue as Cat. Not part of a microsoft family, I am the sole user and administrator on my PC. When I click to open chrome it says it isn't allowed on my 'microsoft family safety settings', gives me an option to request to use chrome and the request doesn't show up anywhere. My PC was working fine last night, turn it on tonight and suddenly can't open chrome.

Really frustrating, especially having to use edge and bing to figure out what happened.

I tried creating a local account and it let me use chrome there, but it of course doesn't have any of my installed apps or files etc so moving to that would be my absolute last resort.

I've looked at all the account settings suggestions that've come up but none of them applied/worked.

Please help. thanks.

Edit: didn't realise this was replying to OP, I don't expect you to respond, Peter. Hopefully we both get our issues sorted.

Hi Ace,

Sadly Completely BYOD, luckily a decent percentage of our students don't have their family managing their personal microsoft accounts, or just aren't using windows.

I'm definitely just more annoyed that Microsoft made a change so that it would block chrome. Definitely not a great way to make people like your products.

So far getting students to use edge is working. But hopefully Microsoft can fix it from their end as I know how much trouble its going to cause when the other side of the world wakes up.

Though thanks for providing solutions. Hopefully those with managed devices can make use of this.

We're having the same issues, also working in IT in a school.

Our students use BYOD laptops that we manage, but a lot have been initially set up with a personal online account that their parents have set up with parental controls. We manage their student Microsoft accounts, but not their personal accounts.

This wouldn't be such an issue if Microsoft didn't insist on pushing online Microsoft accounts when setting up laptops. Fortunately a lot of our student laptops have been set up by us out of the box for them and have local accounts.