Use +5 or −5 minutes for a one-day reward or correction without changing tomorrow’s normal Windows internet limit.
Weekday and weekend limits are the repeating family agreement. The +5 and −5 buttons change only today and automatically return to the normal plan tomorrow.
The normal daily budget should stay predictable, but today your child earned a small bonus—or used extra entertainment time elsewhere. Today’s adjustment handles the exception without rewriting tomorrow.
The weekday and weekend limits are the family’s normal agreement. They answer, “What should happen on an ordinary day?” The +5 and −5 controls answer a different question: “What is fair today?” Keeping those ideas separate makes the rule predictable.
You decide that deserves a small bonus today. Open Parent Settings, enter the parent passcode and choose +5 min. For a ten-minute bonus, choose it twice. Tell the child what the bonus recognizes so ScreenPact reinforces the behavior, not just the screen time.
Use +5 for a one-day reward, an unexpectedly long online assignment or a family decision to extend today. Do not use it to repair a weekday limit that is wrong every day—change the normal limit instead.
You want the total entertainment time to remain balanced. After parent verification, choose −5 min and explain the connection. ScreenPact will not subtract below zero.
Use −5 as a calm, specific adjustment—not a mysterious punishment. The child should know what changed, why it changed and that tomorrow’s normal agreement still stands.
The +5 and −5 buttons are immediate actions; there is no extra Save button. After each press, ScreenPact shows Added five minutes to today or Removed five minutes from today and refreshes the remaining time. Stop when the total is correct, then open Dashboard to double-check it.
Today-only adjustment expires with the day. On the next weekday or weekend day, ScreenPact loads the normal allowance automatically. A bonus does not become an entitlement, and a correction does not silently become a permanent punishment.
If you press +5 or −5 almost every day, the family plan is probably unrealistic. Talk again, change the weekday or weekend limit, save it and explain the new baseline.
A new session cannot start and external internet remains unavailable. A parent may add time for a genuine exception, but ScreenPact’s educational value comes from letting the agreed boundary mean something.
It does: change only today’s available time in five-minute steps.
It does not: change tomorrow, rewrite the weekday/weekend rule, identify what the child watched, or decide whether a reward is deserved.