It can be difficult to look through the Google Admin Console setting-by-setting to find the 13 settings below. Instead, click the Google Sign-In button in the right-hand column, and you'll get an instant automated scan of just these 13 settings to make sure they're up to date.
Name
Recommendation
Current
Incognito mode
Blocked
Sign in with your Google Admin account to check your current values for these settings
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Task manager
Blocked
Startup pages
Restore previous pages
Safe Search and YouTube Restricted Mode
Force Google Safe Search
YouTube Strict Restricted Mode
Download location
Default to Google Drive
Developer tools
Block developer tools
Add browser profiles
Block new browser profiles
Multiple sign-in access
Block multiple sign-in
Browser guest mode
Block browser guest mode
Phone Hub
Block Phone Hub
App streaming
Block app streaming
Help Me Write (AI writing assistant)
Block Help Me Write
OS update reboot notifications
Force reboot to apply OS updates
Keeping students out of trouble, and making sure school devices are used for school
It's surprisingly hard to ensure your school-owned and managed devices are used exclusively for academic purposes. These policies are a must:
1) Incognito mode
Hopefully goes without saying, but Incognito mode should be blocked, as it generally won't have your content filtering extension active and will bypass history. You can enable it for your staff.
2) Task manager
Speaking of content filtering extensions, did you know that you can use the Chrome task manager to temporarily disable an extension? It will restart automatically if it's force-installed, but a few seconds of unrestricted browsing is all it takes.
3) Developer tools
Similar to task manager, allowing developer tools on extensions can make it possible to temporarily bypass them. Better to have developer tools disabled instead.
4) Safe Search and YouTube Restricted Mode
Both Google Search and YouTube support restricted modes that suppress inappropriate content. We recommend keeping these on at the strictest level.
These are all different variants on the same theme: you want your users to sign in with their student@school.edu email address, and stay signed in with only that email address (not a gmail.com address, for example). These settings will block all of the different ways to do that.
Setting up your users for success (a.k.a. Google should have just made these the defaults)
8) Startup pages
Why does Chrome lose your tabs every time you sign in? Using the startup pages setting, you can instead have Chrome remember the tabs, so you can easily pick up where you left off. This really should have been the default.
9) OS update reboot notifications
Sometimes users need an extra nudge to finish applying Chrome OS updates. It can be critical to have your devices on the same OS version, for standardized testing or just ensuring your users won't run into any bugs. This setting will pop up a notification reminding users to reboot their device to update, and you can even make it force-reboot after a certain time window.
10) Download location
Want to ensure your users don't lose their downloads when they switch devices or in case you need to do an OS rollback? The download location setting allows you to set Google Drive as the default.
Removing distractions
11) Phone hub and 12) App streaming
Phone hub is an awesome set of features that connects your Android phone and your Chrome OS device, but these aren't school-appropriate features.
13) Help Me Write (AI writing assistant)
We have an entire guide to AI on Chrome OS, but suffice it to say that you should block Help Me Write in a school setting. Imagine the power of ChatGPT in any textbox on the web. That is essentially Help Me Write.
Instinctive
