Windows 10 provides parental control capabilities and they allow you to create child account which can be monitored and have various limitations. Â However, those features are only for child accounts but it doesn’t mean you can’t set a time limit for any Windows 10 account.
You might be confused regarding all these types of accounts, so here’s a short rundown to clarify things. Firstly, there’s the primary (administrator) account. Then, if you head over to Settings -> Accounts -> Family & other people you will see it is possible to create family member accounts, which can be either adult or child accounts and you get parental controls for the latter.
Also, in the Other People section, you can add guest accounts. So, only child accounts get all those monitoring features and custom limitations. Nevertheless, there could be situations in which you need to set a time limit for another type of user account and the truth is you can.
Set a time limit for any Windows 10 account
I’ll show a quick workaround below that lets you quickly set a time limit for any Windows 10 account, regardless of its type. Even so, you can also use it for child accounts if you just want the ability to control how much time your kids are allowed to access the computer but don’t want to dive into Windows’s 10 parental controls just for this.
Right-click on the Start button and from the available options, select Command Prompt (Admin).
In the command prompt enter the following command:
net user <username> /times:<days,times>
<username> needs to be replaced with the name of the user account you want to set time limits for.
<days,times> needs to contain the day or day interval for the time limit. In Command Prompt the days are represented as M, T, W, Th, F, Sa and Su. Times have the 24-hour format. Here are a few examples of how this works.
Say you want to limit computer usage on a Wednesday between 10AM to 2PM. To do this you’d need to enter /times:W,10:00-14:00
You can also add a day interval such as /times:M-F,09:00-17:00 and multiple time limits need to be separated with a semicolon.
Once you customize the command, hit Enter and that user will only be able to log into the computer during the set time interval(s). And now that you know how you add a time limit to any Windows 10 account, you might also need to remove it at some point. You can do this by typing in the following command:
net user <username> /time:all and press Enter to apply it.
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