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Existing issue:

  1. Login to a Kid's account.
  2. Click the gear in the top right of the main search page to access Settings.
  3. Click the hamburger menu in the top right.
  4. Notice important configuration settings pages are unavailable, in particular "General" and "Search".

Background:
One of Kagi's differentiating features over other search engines is the ability to customize results and appearance.

Many of these options vanish (somewhat inexplicably) for Kids mode accounts - even though it seems completely reasonable for a child to want to adjust them, or a parent to adjust on their child's behalf - depending on the age of the child.

Losing access to "General" prevents Kids accounts from changing the "Open Links in a New Tab" option, which seems unreasonably restrictive.

Losing access to "Search" prevents Kids accounts from changing many things like:

  • Result grouping
  • Snippet length
  • Hiding inline results like vidoes, images, listicles, maps, etc...

None of these seem like things that should be taken away from a Kids account - but I can see that the age of the child is probably a factor here.

Suggestion:
Parent mode should be able to enable/disable each of the configuration settings pages for a Kid's account.
For example, a parent might say Kid A can access "General", "Appearance", "Personalized Results", and "Settings" - but Kid B can only access "Appearance" and "Personalized Results".

Hiding a settings page from the Kids account should not change or revert any of the configuration options on that page. This allows parents to enable the settings pages, configure the results as they would like, then hide them again to prevent their child from making changes.

Parents would have the option of leaving the pages accessible to older kids.

Edit: Although not on a dedicated page of its own - allowing parents to control access to the Custom CSS feature for kids-mode accounts (or to simply configure it directly from the parent account) would be a useful inclusion.
(Although personally I think the other options like hiding inline videos and adjusting result grouping would be more likely to get used than custom CSS for kids accounts - it feels related enough to mention here)

    a month later
    Vlad changed the title to Allow Parents to set what Settings pages are avaialble to Kids .
      22 days later

      As of right now children don't see the general settings tab. One particular problem is that there is no obvious way for them to change their UI language from the default. Even if the parent has a non-English UI, the child does not.

      I suggest to expose the general settings tab. Better even, it would be a "nice to have" feature if parents could choose what settings are available to their children accounts.

      Thanks!
      Alex

        I think it'd be great if parents had the ability to choose what settings were available, then they can properly tailor the settings to the age of the child and what the child would know how to navigate themselves.

        @ram Yes, that would be great! Right now I am thinking of turning my two children accounts into normal accounts. I'll lose the benefit of specifying child-friendly content; though at least my kids can still enjoy all the other Kagi benefits, such as ad-free searches and a highly customizable search experience.

          Merged 3 posts from Family plan: Expose "general" settings to child accounts.
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