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Breaking News! Family Link Now Allows Some Chrome Extensions!

Family Link Chrome Extensions 2

Breaking News! Family Link Now Allows Some Chrome Extensions!

Family Link now allows some Chrome extensions! 

This week, we’ve been inundated with the following question:

Does Family Link allow the Zoom extension?

And the answer has always been, “no.” But that changed today! 

For over a year the PYE team has been active in Chromebook support forums trying to get answers for various issues in their Family Link solution. Today, we received an update from Google telling us that they’ve opened up Family Link to allow certain Chrome extensions! This is awesome news for parents #stuckathome with Chromebooks and online learning through Zoom and other learning tools due to COVID-19.

Here’s the exact message:

Hello Chromebook Community,
You should soon see another update on your device for Chrome OS 80! As part of this new release, you will be able to download the following extensions on your child’s Family Link account. The following Chrome browser extensions on the Chrome Web Store are now available to download on Chromebook.
  1. Time4Learning
  2. Google Dictionary
  3. Voice in Voice Typing
  4. Auto Highlight
  5. LucidChart
Open up Chrome Web Store on your child’s Chromebook to get started. To learn more about how you can download an extension to your child’s Chromebook, please visit the following help center article.  Please review the terms and conditions, privacy disclosures, and permissions for the Chrome Web Store extensions that your child installs. Some extensions may require your child to sign in using their school account. Parental approval for other extensions not mentioned above will become available in the coming months.
As always, please share any feedback you have by using the instructions here, and if you encounter any bugs or issues, please feel free to create a new thread on this forum!
Friendly Reminder: This update will be progressively rolling out over the coming days. Your device may not immediately be eligible for this update.
Best,
Alisha on behalf of the Chrome OS and Family Link teams
NOTEdon’t miss our Zoom best practices for teachers and students, which have been downloaded thousands of times this week. Please share this link with everyone in your districts!
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4 thoughts on “Breaking News! Family Link Now Allows Some Chrome Extensions!”

  1. Hello Chris, I enjoyed seeing you on Pandemic Parenting this week-I did send in a few questions prior to the start of the event and have not heard back yet, so maybe you can help. My 6th grade son has a chromebook, that we own but his school manages. The device has many assistive technologies on it for his learning disabilities. The device generally goes back and forth between home and school but of course is home full time now. I have been unsuccessful to get family link to set up as the chromebook has his school email address and not a gmail address that is used on the device. I still need to monitor it. It has bark but Im trying to get family link as well….do you know if it is possible to use family link with a school email address? thank you! Carol Deely

    1. Hello, Carol Deely – I’m sorry that I wasn’t notified about your questions that came through the Conference, but I’m glad you could attend. Are you able to add new users to the Chromebook or than the school email account? If you can, then you could apply Family Link to that non-school account. For the school-managed account, you won’t be able to apply Family Link to it, because the school’s management dictates what that account can or can’t do. Where I’m a little confused is that you said you’re already using Bark, which means either the school account allows Bark to be added as an extension (which is rare), or you are able to add other, new users, and you’re using Bark on that non-school account. If that’s true, then you should be able to use Family Link on that non-school account. The problem is that if you’re using Family Link, you can’t use Bark, since Family Link doesn’t allow extensions.

      Are you satisfied with what Bark tells you? If so, then you might stick with it over Family Link but please let me know!
      Chris

  2. Hi Chris,

    I just tried this today but my child’s under 13 google account wasn’t able to go to the Chrome Web Store despite me having the setting enabled in the Family Link parent app to allow extensions to be installed. Have you found this to have changed recently as well?

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