Hi everyone, this is my first Product Hunt launch! 😬 Here's my story: I have four kids, and a few years ago they hit the age where they started needing to do lots of their school online. When I started looking for a filtering/parental controls app for macOS, I was pretty disappointed. Filtering apps that work based on a "block-list" only sell parents the illusion of safety. With over 250,000 new websites created every 24 hours, and 37% of the internet being porn, there's no way anyone can ever hope to keep a block-list up to date. There are only a few apps out there that let you take the opposite approach: blocking everything except for what's on a safe-list. My older brother had already tried all of them, so I installed the one he liked the best. It was not a great experience, to say the least. Not only was it incredibly time-consuming and onerous to use, but it also intermittently failed. So, as a software engineer, I of course started thinking: how hard could it be to build something better? Two years later, after dog-fooding it with my own kids and a handful of family friends, I'm introducing Gertrude to the world. At its core, it tries to tackle head-on the fundamental problem of making a filtering app designed for safe-listing sites actually easy to use. I tried to fix every frustration I had with the app I had been using, by building core concepts and features like: - 🚀 Remote control: After an initial connection step, everything about your kids internet access can be controlled from your phone or computer -- unlike most apps in this category, which require you to administrate them on your kids computer. - 🔐 Unlock requests: If your kid is getting blocked from a site they need to use, they can easily identify the blocked request, and request access. You get a Slack, text or email on your device, where you can accept or deny the request. - ⛓ Keychains: Create, reuse, and share groups of safe-listed sites in "keychains", including a growing number of curated public keychains unblocking popular educational websites. - 🧐 Transparent monitoring: Opt-in to a feature which records intermittent randomized screenshots of your kids screens, and/or their keystrokes. We don't hide this, your kids are clearly notified the entire time their activity is being recorded. The idea isn't secretive spying, but transparent accountability. You get to review their activity on your own time, on your own device. - ⏰ Temporary filter suspension: With monitoring enabled, it becomes safe to temporarily suspend the filter for unusual bursts of internet activity--a feature our early users love and use heavily. Definitely looking for feedback, positive and negative. I hope you check it out! 🕺 FUN FACT: my son and nephew helped me build the websites for Gertrude, while both of their computers were being protected and monitored by Gertrude.

Gertrude

Rethinking parental controls for macOS.