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SPRby Supernetworks

Parental Controls & Personas

Personas let you group a person's devices under one profile and manage their internet access together: a shared daily time limit, block schedules, and on-the-fly Pause and Extend controls. Find them under Devices → Personas.

What a Persona is​

A Persona is a named profile with:

  • A Name (for example alice) and an optional Description.
  • A Tag of the form persona:<name>. Any device carrying this tag belongs to the persona.
  • A Daily internet limit in minutes, shared across all of the persona's devices.
  • Zero or more Block schedules (time windows during which the internet is blocked).
  • An optional Family DNS filter that applies the dns:family policy to the persona's devices.

Personas are enforced at the network level. SPR watches which tagged devices are using the internet and blocks WAN access for the whole persona when a limit or schedule applies.

Create a Persona​

Click Add Persona and fill in:

  • Name — the person's label. Names are normalized to lowercase with spaces replaced by hyphens, and the persona's tag becomes persona:<name>.
  • Description — optional free text.
  • Daily internet limit (minutes) — enter 0 (or leave blank) for no limit. The limit is shared across every device in the persona and resets each day at 6am.
  • Block schedules — add one or more windows. For each window, select the days of the week (Su–Sa) and a Block start and end time in HH:MM (24-hour). Windows that cross midnight (end earlier than start) are supported.
  • Family DNS filter — optionally apply the dns:family policy to the persona's devices.
  • Devices — pick the devices that belong to this persona (see below).

Click Save.

How devices join a Persona​

A device belongs to a persona when it carries that persona's persona:<name> tag. Selecting a device in the persona's Devices field assigns the tag for you; removing it clears the tag. You can also add or remove the tag directly from a device's edit view.

A device can belong to only the personas whose tags it holds, and controls apply to every device that shares the tag.

Daily usage and reset​

While a persona has a daily limit, SPR samples WAN traffic once a minute. If any of the persona's devices sent or received internet traffic during that minute, the persona's used-minutes counter increments by one. Because usage is counted per persona (not per device), the daily limit is shared by all of the persona's devices.

Usage resets on a 6am boundary: minutes accumulated before 6am count toward the previous day, and the counter clears at 6am each day. Expired Pause and Extend grants are cleared at the same time.

The list shows each persona's progress (for example 45m of 120m today) and a status badge:

  • Active — controls are configured and the persona is currently allowed.
  • Timed out — the persona is currently blocked (over its limit, inside a block schedule, or paused).
  • Extended — extra time has been granted and the persona is allowed until it expires.

Pause and Extend​

Each persona in the list offers a quick control:

  • Pause 1h — immediately block the persona's internet for 60 minutes, regardless of its remaining time. Use this to force a break now.
  • Extend 30m — shown when a persona is timed out. Grants 30 more minutes of access, overriding the daily limit, any block schedule, and any active pause for that window.

Blocking takes effect within about a minute: the persona's devices lose WAN access and existing connections are dropped. When a daily limit is first reached, SPR emits a timelimit:reached event that can drive a notification.

Reset usage​

The persona's three-dot menu includes Reset usage, which clears the persona's used minutes and cancels any active pause or extend grant — effectively a fresh start before the next 6am reset. The same menu holds Edit and Delete. Deleting a persona lets you optionally clear its tag from all member devices.

Limits of network-level enforcement​

Personas are a network-based control. As covered in Network Based Parental Controls, these controls are less suitable on their own for children sophisticated enough to configure their own devices — for example by tunneling traffic over a VPN. Time limits and schedules apply to devices connected through SPR; they are best paired with on-device controls where stronger guarantees are needed.