Device controls · 2026

Set the controls your devices already have.

Your phone, your computer, and your router each carry a real explicit-content control. Most are worth turning on tonight. These guides give the exact path, say what each one misses, and tell you who can lock it.

5 guides · First-party sources · Checked August 18, 2026

Choose your device

Start with the device you use most.

Each page covers the OS setting, the lock, and the DNS lever, in the words the settings screen uses.

iPhone & iPad

Limit Adult Websites (Screen Time)

Filters classified content

Android

Web content filters (Parental controls, Android 17)

Filters classified content

Mac

Limit Adult Websites (Screen Time > Content & Privacy)

Filters classified content

Windows

Filter inappropriate websites and searches (Microsoft Family Safety)

Filters classified content

Router & DNS

Filtering DNS resolver (family or adult-content filter)

Blocks accounts or communities you name

How a DNS filter blocks a domain

Any app on the device

Asks “where is this site?” before it can load anything.

Your DNS setting

On the router, or on the device itself.

A filtering resolver

Answers normally, or refuses for a domain on its adult list.

What it catches

  • Whole domains on the provider’s list
  • Every device on the Wi-Fi, when set at the router
  • SafeSearch and Restricted Mode, when the provider forces them

What steps around it

  • A VPN
  • A browser’s own secure-DNS setting
  • Mobile data, off the Wi-Fi
  • Content inside an app the list allows
The one control that reaches every device on the Wi-Fi, and its holes.

Questions answered

Which of these controls can I lock so I cannot undo it in a weak moment?

A Screen Time passcode someone else holds, a supervised account, or a DNS filter set on the router by someone else. Everything else is a setting you can switch back off. Each guide says who can lock it.

Do these filters catch content inside apps?

Mostly not. Web filters cover browsers that honor them; DNS blocks whole domains but not content an allowed app serves; Apple's Sensitive Content Warning covers Messages, AirDrop, and apps that adopt it, not social feeds. The guides say exactly where each hole is.

Is this parental control?

The operating systems call some of these features that. These pages are written for a man setting up his own devices first, and a household second. Use the pieces that fit.

What does On Guard add on top of these?

Real-time detection of explicit content on the screen itself, on Mac, Windows, and Android, with a gate, a redirect, and a check-in text to an ally, no matter which app it happened in. On iPhone, On Guard works through the Screen Time controls described here.

These controls change often. Open a guide for first-party sources and its last checked date.

Want product help instead? Browse On Guard documentation.