With the firmware 5.50, PlayStation 4 has been expanded to the management of play time, allowing the guardian of the family to regulate the number of hours that young users can spend playing games on the console. Let’s see how the new features work.
Play Time Management is available from the web browser to monitor the activities of younger users at any time, and from the PlayStation 4 itself by going to Settings-> Content Filtering/Family Management. This feature allows guardians of the family to impose a time limit on the use of PS4 by the little ones, where players can use any features of the console, from playing games to watching a video.
Three simple settings allow you to regulate the management of playing time. Let’s see them in detail:
1. Setting Play Time Limitations – Using these settings you can enable play time limitations, or disable them by selecting “Limit” or “Do not limit”.
2. Play Time Allocation – This set of options allows you to set time limits related to the console usage. The simplest option is “Everyday”, where the options “Game duration”, “Start time” and “End time” will be applied every day of the week. “For days of the week”, as an alternative, allows you to choose different game times based on the days of the week.
3. Action at the end of the play time – When the game time expires two actions can be enabled: “Notification only” or “Log out from the PS4”. If you select “Notification Only”, a notification will remind the children that their play time is over, and will be displayed again every 5 minutes until the console is manually turned off. By choosing “Log out from the PS4”, instead, at the end of the time, the automatic logout will be carried out from the PS4, suspending the application used at that time.
When the play time ends while the Logout mode is active, the child will be taken to a screen with two options: “Ok” to return to the login screen with the game time indicator set at 00:00, and “Ask for play time to be changed” to request family guardians to extend the game session.
The guardians of the family can change the playing time at any time, so as to decrease or increase the number of hours available to the little ones. To do this there are three different possibilities:
1. From PS4 – Go to Settings-> Content Filtering/Family Management, select the family member account for which you want to change the play time, then choose the “Change play time for today” option. From here you can increase or decrease game time in 15-minute intervals.
2. From web browser – Go to Account Management, select Account-> Family Management and choose the family member account for which you want to change the play time, then go to “Change play time for today”. Also, in this case, you can increase or decrease the playing time in 15-minute intervals.
3. From PS App – Open PS App on your mobile device and log in with your family guardian credentials. Touch the PlayStation symbol at the bottom of the screen, then go to Settings-> Account Information. Now tap the menu icon at the top left of the screen, select “Family management” and choose the underage account for which you want to change the playing time. Go to “Change play time for today” to increase or decrease play time in 15-minute intervals.
This concludes our Guide to set Play Time Management with firmware 5.50 of PlayStation 4.
