Steam Deck Blocking Browsers and Parental Controls Guide

[tsefainer]

This is an incredibly in-depth guide for how to setup a Steam Deck with Parental Controls for your child. Or for an adult who wants to have their access to pornographic content on the Steam Deck restricted to aid in their addiction recovery journey.

-If you do not already have a Steam Account, create one to use as the Adult account which will manage your Steam Family.

-Create a second Steam Account which will end up being a Child account. This is what you will log into for the Steam Deck for the child or adult to use. Any game purchases made on this account will be available for use by the child account since they are part of the Steam Family as long as you enable library sharing in the main account. You will be shown how to choose which games are shared later.

-In the Adult account, setup a Steam Family and add the second account as a Child account managed under the Steam Family. You will want to have added the second account as a friend so they show up here.

-You will then be required to accept the invitation to the family on Steam in the Child account, and then to receive an email and approve the request from the email. You should be logged in to the Child account in the same browser for this step as well so that when you click approve on the email, it can access the Steam account and fully approve the setting. It's confusing, I know but for me accessing the email in a browser with the Child account logged in on another tab was what needed for the email approval to work.

-Next choose the option to manage the Steam Family in the Adult account and click to edit the preferences for the Child account and change the following:

-Toggle on, "Enable parental controls for this user"
-Library option Available library content, choose "Only games I choose" and select only appropriate games.
-Toggle OFF, "Allow access to the Steam store"
-Toggle OFF, "Allow access to community generated content"
-Following 3 options are at your discretion

Important: of the 10 tick boxes for content, make sure that at least the bottom 4 are off. All of those options are 100% adult content that's only intended to be pornographic.

The section which says, "Nudity or Sexual Content will have some games which are not necessarily intended to be pornographic, but which will include adult sexual content in some form like Cyberpunk 2077. Tick these options off for younger users who shouldn't be playing games like this anyway or for users who would find this content triggering or if they want it ticked off for whatever reason.

The top 4 tick boxes can be ticked on or off at your discretion.

-Important step!!!
Be sure to go into the Security options on the Steam Deck in Gaming Mode and toggle on the following (this will require you to request access to the feature for 1 hour from the Adult who manages your Steam Family. It would be best to be sure the child doesn't tick these boxes back off again for that hour until the access is again revoked):
-"Before showing login screen"
-"When switching to desktop mode"

-Final Important step!!!
Steam helpfully offers a shortcut to install Google Chrome under the non-Steam games tab if you have no games installed there. Make sure you have no games installed so that you can choose this option and install Chrome. Then simply select "Hide this game" under options > manage. Problem solved.

-Important note!!!
The child (or adult) who uses the device that is setup to be protected should not have access to the password for the Steam Account they're using as this can enable them to reset the PIN which blocks access to the Desktop Mode. They also should not have access to be able to make changes to Steam settings on the Adult's account from another device or something which manages the Steam Family as this will allow them to disable the Steam Parental Controls altogether.

Also, the child should not have access to the emails associated with either accounts as this could allow them to reset the passwords for those accounts and then disable parental controls.

Feel free to comment with any suggestions. But this isn't intended to be fully hack-proof or anything. It's just a setup guide for sensible parental controls for those who are interested.

[jccase]

Hey Friend

Huge fan of what you are trying to do here.

Been working on a similar set of efforts myself. In my experience, there are some really cool protections that can be setup and locked behind Desktop mode. This includes a strategy that can force all internet traffic to be filtered through a family DNS service that blocks a lot of inappropriate content and even forces search engines to default and LOCK into safe search mode. Additionally, you can even set up a BLACKLIST of websites that can be blocked locally. My device is setup this way and has provided a set of security that I am pretty pleased with.

I have found 6 or 7 methods that are worth combining for the best security. I wrote about 5 main ones in the post link below and added some bonus suggestions at the bottom of the post.

Your post here addresses the 5th Suggestion of which I may send people to if they want more info about these Steam based controls.

Here is the link to the post if you are interested in reading:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions/0/725768672857255453/

Would you mind if I linked this post of yours in my own post and give you credit for addressing this particular strategy?

[jccase]

Additionally, check out my solution for Chrome in gaming mode. I think it can still be retrieved in gaming mode even if its hidden.

[BugasTheBlue]

Originally posted by jccase:

Additionally, check out my solution for Chrome in gaming mode. I think it can still be retrieved in gaming mode even if its hidden.

You can by searching google in the search bar. This will reveal it in hidden games.

[tsefainer]

jccase I don't mind at all if you link my post. And thank you very much for the helpful replies to both of you.