A kiosk PC has the simplest job in the building: one service, one desk, strangers' hands. It is also the PC most likely to be found showing football highlights by lunchtime — unless the allowlist is doing its job.
✍️ Technical Anshu🪟 Windows 10 / 11⏱️ 7 minute read
🎥 Watch the full video — Website Filter Pro setup and allow mode, step by step
Reception enquiry PCs, cyber-café desks, library catalogues, hospital registration counters, the PC in the corner that exists only for one portal — these machines share a profile: the user is anonymous, the task is fixed, and nobody watches the screen. That is precisely the allowlist's home ground. Website Filter Pro's allow mode from the video, combined with a throwaway standard account and a few kiosk habits, turns a general PC into a single-purpose desk that quietly refuses everything else. This page is the complete pattern.
A kiosk PC boot state (illustrative)
Auto sign-in: DeskUser (standard account)
Browser opens to: the service portal
Allowlist: portal + its sign-in domain only
Test — search: ⛔ blocked
Test — video site: ⛔ blocked
Admin access: password held at reception / owner
Illustrative kiosk checklist. The machine should reach this state by itself every morning, with no help from whoever opens the office.
1
Give the Kiosk Its Own Throwaway Account
Never run a public desk on the office's normal login. The kiosk account exists to hold nothing and risk nothing.
Create a dedicated standard user account for the desk — no admin rights, no access to office files
Keep no personal or office data signed in on it: no office email, no saved banking, nothing
Enable automatic sign-in for this account if the desk must start itself each morning
The admin account stays separate, with a password held by the owner or reception lead
2
Allow Only the Service the Desk Exists For
The kiosk list is the shortest allowlist you will ever write — usually one service and its helpers.
Add the service portal's domain in Website Filter Pro allow mode
Walk the full public workflow once — search a record, open the result, print if the desk offers printing — and note any step that fails
Add the sign-in and helper domains the workflow actually touches (the hidden domains routine)
Test that a search engine and a video site are both refused — those are the two doors the public tries first
3
Add the Kiosk Habits Around the Filter
The filter controls websites. A kiosk also needs small habits so the desk resets itself and stays boring.
Set the browser's home page to the portal, so every new session starts at the service
Turn on the browser's option to clear history and cookies on exit where available — the next visitor should not meet the previous visitor's session
Set a short screen lock that returns to the sign-in or portal screen, not to a desktop full of icons
Physically tidy the desk: no USB drives left inserted, keyboard and mouse only — a kiosk invites experiments
4
Plan the Daily Reset and the Weekly Glance
Kiosks fail slowly and silently. Two tiny routines keep yours honest.
Daily: a restart returns the PC to its known state — make it part of opening or closing the office
Weekly: someone responsible opens one blocked site and one allowed site, confirming the filter is alive
If the portal changes its address (it happens), update the allowlist the same day and re-run the workflow test
Keep the approved list and the admin password location written in the office's own records — kiosk knowledge should not live in one person's memory
🔴 Kiosk honesty: an allowlist stops the browser wandering. It does not make a public PC a safe place for visitors to type passwords or banking details — a public desk should offer the service it exists for, and staff should steer personal logins to people's own phones.
🎥 Watch the Full Video Guide
The complete Website Filter Pro walkthrough — download, allow mode and testing — is shown live in the video.
Can the kiosk PC open only one website and nothing else at all?
Yes — that is allow mode at its simplest. Add the portal and the helper domains its login and pages genuinely need, and every other site is refused. Test the complete public workflow once, because the helpers are the part everyone forgets.
Should the kiosk account be an administrator for convenience?
Never. A public desk with admin rights lets any visitor uninstall the filter and own the machine. The kiosk account must be a standard user with no office data; administration happens from a separate account whose password stays with staff.
Visitors keep landing on the previous person's session. How do we stop that?
Set the browser to clear cookies and history when it closes, keep sessions short with a screen lock, and restart the PC daily. The allowlist limits where the browser can go; session hygiene is what protects one visitor from the next.
This guide is based on the Technical Anshu video on allowing only selected websites • Stuck on a step? Ask in the video comments — answers happen there 🙏