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Feature · Available since FireAI 0.1.7

Parental Controls: block adult sites, gambling, drugs, games, ads and scams in one click

Make a child’s Mac safe in one switch, without a router box, a VPN or an account anywhere.

Where in FireAI: Parental Controls

Parental Controls blocks whole categories of websites, not one site at a time. Each category is a shield. Turn one on and FireAI’s network filter refuses every site on its list, in every app and every browser on this Mac.

The six shields

ShieldWhat it blocksList (publisher, licence)
NSFW ShieldAdult and explicit sitesHagezi NSFW (GPL-3.0) and OISD NSFW (GPL-3.0)
Gambling ShieldBetting, casino and lottery sitesHagezi Gambling, medium (GPL-3.0)
Drugs ShieldSites that sell or promote drugsBlocklist Project: Drugs (Unlicense)
Gaming ShieldGame stores, launchers, online games and browser-game sitesHisnLabs curated list, built into FireAI, and Blocklist Project: Fortnite (Unlicense)
Ads & Trackers ShieldAdvertising and tracking servers, in every appHagezi Pro (GPL-3.0)
Malware & Scams ShieldKnown malicious, phishing and scam sitesHagezi Threat Intelligence, mini (GPL-3.0) and abuse.ch URLhaus (CC0)

FireAI downloads each list straight from its publisher when you turn its shield on, then once a day. The request only asks for the list: nothing about your browsing is sent. No public list covers online games well, so HisnLabs keeps its own hand-checked Gaming list inside the app.

Child Safety First

One switch for a child’s Mac. It turns on the NSFW, Gambling, Drugs and Gaming shields and Safari only. Ads & Trackers and Malware & Scams stay as you set them. Turn it off and the shields you had on before stay on.

Safari only

With Safari only on, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, Opera, Arc, Vivaldi and Tor Browser can’t go online. Shields work in every browser, but some browsers can use their own private DNS or built-in VPN, which could slip past a filter that blocks by site name. Safari only closes that gap. FireAI also blocks the known private-DNS servers while a content shield is on.

Ask FireAI

You can also type an order in the Ask FireAI box: “block online games”, “turn on child safety”, “no more ads”, “safari only”, or “games are fine again”. FireAI shows what it will change and waits for you to click Apply. A named site stays a single rule: “block Roblox” blocks Roblox, not every game. See how Ask FireAI understands you.

What shields can’t do

  • They block whole sites by their name. They can’t see which page of a site is open, so a harmful page on an otherwise fine site isn’t blocked.
  • A list can miss a site, or rarely list one by mistake. To let one site through, add an Allow rule for that site in Rules; an Allow rule for a whole app doesn’t switch a shield off.
  • Shields only work while protection is on. If protection is paused, Parental Controls says so at the top of the page, with a button to turn it back on.
  • Your home network, printers and shared drives are never blocked.

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