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On a Nintendo Switch, why don't parental controls kill the game when the time limit is up?

Writer Matthew Harrington

Nintendo Switch has a Parental Control system and corresponding app. You can also get daily reports:

Report screen of Nintendo Switch Parental Control

When playing Minecraft Online or Stardew Valley, the parental control Play Limit (set to 1 hour per day) doesn't kill the game at the end of the 1 hour.

On a Nintendo Switch, why don't parental controls kill the game when the time limit is up?

Some people said if I got the settings correctly, then this should not occur. I have included images of my existing settings that replicate this behaviour.

Play Time Limit settings windowPlay Time Limit settings window, "Suspend Software" toggle turned ON

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2 Answers

The app for your smart device should be able to interrupt game play according to its listing on the Google Play store:

It is also possible to suspend gameplay automatically when the play-time limit is reached.

This is also inline with what Nintendo Support pages say in the table found on this page.

According to this guide, you can use the Suspend Software feature in the app to stop the game:

  1. Open the parental controls app.
  2. Tap Console Settings in the upper-right corner. Create a PIN that only you know and your kids can't guess.
  3. In Console Settings, tap Play-Time Limit. Set a daily limit (up to six hours) on the amount of time your kids can play.
  4. You have the option of shutting down the device when your kids reach their daily limit by enabling Suspend Software. Otherwise, kids just get a notification that they've reached the limit but can still play.

Screenshot of the feature from Nintendo Support Video:

suspend software

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Did you whitelist those games?

My experience: When using the "Young child" restriction level, Minecraft was not able to be played at all, and had to be added to the whitelist. Despite the description, this does seem to impact restrictions on daily playtime. Without making any other changes, my son was able to play Minecraft uninterrupted yesterday

Solution: Remove these games from the whitelist, and remove or reduce the restriction level to allow the games to be played. My guess is it would require "Teen" or "None". Since my main use for this app is the time limit, I just turned the restrictions off entirely. This morning my son was able to play for only 30 minutes before the Switch was suspended as expected.