Home windows parental controls are blocking Chrome

Cease me if you happen to’ve heard this one earlier than: Microsoft is making it tougher to make use of Chrome on Home windows. The offender? This time, it is Windows’ Family Safety feature. Since early this month, the parental management measure has prevented customers from opening Chrome. Unusually, no different apps or browsers look like affected.

Redditors first reported the problem on June 3 (via The Verge). u/Witty-Low cost-2906 posted that Chrome crashed on Home windows 11. “Simply flashes shortly, unable to open with no error message,” they wrote. One other consumer chimed in with an accurate guess. “This can be associated to Parental Controls,” u/duk242 surmised. “I’ve had 9 college students come see the IT Desk within the final hour saying Chrome will not open.”

A Google spokesperson pointed Engadget to an announcement in its group discussion board. “Our staff has investigated these reviews and decided the reason for this habits,” Neighborhood Supervisor Ellen T. wrote. “For some customers, Chrome is unable to run when Microsoft Household Security is enabled.”

Curiously, Microsoft hasn’t fastened the bug after 17 days. (Go determine!)

Home windows Household Security is an non-compulsory parental management function for households and faculties. It lets them handle youngsters’s display screen time, filter their internet searching and monitor their exercise.

There are a few workarounds whereas we await the corporate to take motion. One is to show off the “Filter Inappropriate Web sites” setting in Household Security. Nevertheless, that removes the safety function, letting the youngsters run wild on the World Extensive Internet. (Weeee!!) A less complicated repair is to navigate to your Chrome folder and rename chrome.exe to one thing like chrome1.exe.

Engadget emailed Microsoft for a remark. We’ve not heard again, however we’ll replace this story if we do.

For those who’ve ever put in Chrome on Home windows, this bug could set off deja vu. Microsoft has a protracted historical past of determined tips to maintain you on its default merchandise. That has included obnoxious prompts, pop-up ads for Bing and begging customers to stay with Edge. Not less than European customers will get some reduction. Microsoft is scaling back its cheap tactics there to adjust to EU laws.