Windows 11’s Family Safety feature is supposed to block certain websites from children, but apparently it’s also been causing issues with Google’s Chrome browser, a (vastly more popular) competitor to Microsoft’s own Edge.
The problem first surfaced on Windows on June 3, per The Verge, when several users started noticing they couldn’t open Chrome or their browser would crash randomly. Restarting their computer or reinstalling Chrome didn’t fix the issue, and other browsers like Firefox and Opera appeared unaffected.
On Monday, a Google spokesperson posted in the company’s community forum that it had investigated these reports and found the issues were linked to Microsoft’s new Windows Family Safety feature. This optional feature is primarily used by parents and schools to manage children’s screen time, filter their web browsing, and monitor their online activity.
Curiously, the bug has been going on for weeks now, and Microsoft still hasn’t issued a patch. “We’ve not heard anything from Microsoft about a fix being rolled out,” wrote a Chromium engineer in a bug tracking thread on June 10. “They have provided guidance to users who contact them about how to get Chrome working again, but I wouldn’t think that would have a large effect.”
While this issue could be an innocent bug, Microsoft has a history of placing annoying hurdles between Edge and Chrome to entice users to stick with its browser. So anytime a technical snafu makes Chrome run worse on Windows PCs, Microsoft understandably gets some serious side eye.
Workaround for Google Chrome issues on Windows
Thankfully, there seem to be two ways to get around this bug while we wait for Microsoft to issue a fix, and they’re both fairly simple.
The most straightforward is to turn off the “Filter Inappropriate Websites” setting. Head to the Family Safety mobile app or Family Safety web portal, select a user’s account, and choose to disable “Filter inappropriate websites” under the Edge tab. However, that’ll remove the guardrails on Chrome and let your child access any website, including the ones you were trying to block in the first place.
If you want to keep the guardrails on and still use Chrome, some users reported that altering the chrome.exe name in your Chrome folder (to something like Chrome1, for example), got the browser to work again even with the Family Safety feature enabled.
