Updated August 2026
Updated August 2026 · every menu path re-read against Google's own Family Link help pages on 21 August 2026, and the four apps re-read from their US Play listings the same day
Google Family Link is our best overall and best free pick because its listing, read 21 August 2026, is free, no ads label, no third party data sharing.
Qustodio is our filtering pick because its listing FAQ, read 21 August 2026, says it protects Windows, Mac and iOS; free to install, no ads label, purchases from $34.99.
Bark is our message alerts pick because its listing, read 21 August 2026, prices monitoring at $14 a month; free to install, no ads label.
Data checked: 21 August 2026.
This is a setup guide, not a roundup. Every menu path below was read from Google's own Family Link help pages on 21 August 2026 and is linked where it is used, because no store listing verifies one of them. The table records only what four Play listings publish. For the full field, read our best parental controls apps for Android.
Two columns do the work here. What its listing describes is each developer's own account of what the app does to a phone, condensed from the description on its Play listing and quoted from that description in the app's own section below, and it is where these four actually differ. Shares data is that listing's own Data Safety answer, read 21 August 2026: Family Link declares no data shared with third parties, plus an independent security review that no other listing here carries, while the other three declare that they may share data with third parties, and two of those three describe handling a child's messages. No listing of the four carries an advertising label, so that answer is printed in each app's own fact line below rather than as a column that would read the same four times.
Read the Price column carefully, because free to install is not the same as free to use. Family Link's listing shows no in-app purchases, and none of the Google pages read for this guide prices anything behind it. Bark is the only one of the four whose description publishes service prices, read 21 August 2026. Qustodio publishes only its in-app purchase range and says a basic plan reaches some features while a premium plan reaches all of them. Norton Family's Play listing sells nothing at all, and that is a fact about the store rather than about the service: what Norton Family costs cannot be read from Play.
Family Link ties your child's Google Account to yours and manages that account from your phone. Google's Get started with Family Link page, read 21 August 2026, introduces its list with the words you can use Family Link to do things like
, and then names: change some of the child's Google Account settings, decide which apps the child can download or purchase and block or allow apps, set a bedtime or daily screen limits and check how much time the child spends in certain apps, check the location of the child's Android or compatible Fitbit device, and restrict mature content on Google Play. Read that as examples rather than as a boundary, because Google wrote it as examples.
The same page states four limits plainly. Family Link may not be available in all countries or regions. iPhones, iPads and computers other than Chromebooks cannot be supervised with it. A Google Workspace for Education account, the kind a school issues, cannot be managed by it at all. And its purchase approval settings only apply to purchases made through Google Play's billing system.
Those four read like small print and are not. They are the shape of the category, and the platform sets them rather than the app. What Family Link reaches is a Google Account, the Android devices that account is signed in to, and Google's own services on them. The version of Android on the child's phone then decides which controls exist at all: Google's schedules page, read 21 August 2026, gives Android 7 and up for Downtime and School time, and Android 14 and up, or WearOS 5 and up, before you can manage who your child calls and texts. Whichever app a parent picks, it is working inside those account and device rules.
Message reading is not among those examples. This page will not turn that into a statement about what Family Link cannot see, because Google documents the controls it offers rather than the absences, and an absence nobody published is not a fact. One reading is ours rather than Google's, and it is worth flagging as ours: what is documented is a set of controls over the account, the device and Google's own services, which makes it a fence around the device rather than a window into every app on it.
Google's requirements are short, and they are on the same Get started page, read 21 August 2026. To manage a child's Google Account you need a Google Account of your own, you must be 18 or older (or the appropriate age in your country), you need an Android device (6.0 and up), an iPhone or iPad (iOS 16 and up), or a Chromebook that supports Android apps to install Family Link on, and you must live in the same country as your child. Some settings can also be managed at familylink.google.com.
Two Google sources differ on the Android floor for your own phone, and it is worth knowing which one decides. The help page above says 6.0 and up. The Family Link Play listing, read the same day, states Android 7.0 as its own minimum. Both figures are Google's; which one governs is our reading, and our reading is that the listing decides whether the app installs on your phone.
For the child's side the Get started page says they need a Google Account and an Android device (6.0 and up), a Chromebook running Chrome OS 71 or higher, or a compatible Fitbit device. Two narrower floors sit on other pages: screen time limits are documented for Android 7 and up, and so are Downtime and School time.
You also need the child with you, because signing in on their device is a step nobody can do from another room. Google's account creation page, read 21 August 2026, says making the account takes about 15 minutes.
One warning here is ours rather than Google's. If you are handing over a phone that was signed in to an adult account, copy anything you want to keep off it before you change accounts. A reset erases everything and there is no undo.
The flow below is for a child under 13 or, in Google's own wording, the applicable age in your country. For a teen who already has a Google Account you add supervision to the existing account instead of creating one.
One rule Google flags for the European Union sits on the same account creation page: if you live there and your child is between 13 and 15, you follow the new device setup steps instead. That is Google's rule for its own accounts, and this page does not read it as a statement of law.
Screen time is the control most parents set first. Google's Manage your child's screen time page, read 21 August 2026, gives the route as: open the Family Link app, at the top left select your child, then at the bottom left tap Screen time and Time limits. The same page says limits can be set for Android 7 and up devices.
Under Time limits, turn on Daily limit, tap Weekly schedule, select a day, and enter how much screen time that day gets. To use one figure across the week, tap Apply to all days of the week, then Done. The same page states what a locked device does: the child cannot see notifications and cannot unlock it or use any app, except apps set as Unlimited time apps, and on Android phones they can still answer calls and, if the device has a calling plan, tap Emergency to make one.
One line on that page matters more than the procedure around it, and it is the thing this setup most often gets wrong. In Google's own words, read 21 August 2026: Daily limits apply to each Android device or Chromebook your child uses. For example, if you set a daily limit of 2 hours, your child would get 2 hours of time on each device.
The limit is per device, not per child, so a phone and a tablet on the same account quietly double it.
The same page documents a route on the child's own handset as well as the one from yours, and it forks on the Android version: open Settings, and on Android 8.1 (O) and later tap Digital Wellbeing and parental controls, while on earlier versions tap Google, then All services, then under Kids and family tap Parental controls. Viewing the current daily limit there needs nothing; changing it asks you to sign in or enter your Parent Access Code.
Bedtime and Downtime are two names for one thing, and both names are Google's own. The Get started page, read 21 August 2026, lists what a parent can do as Set a bedtime or daily screen limits
, and the feature that does it is called Downtime and sits under Schedules. Google's Set a schedule on your child's device page, read 21 August 2026, gives Screen time then Schedules, then turn on Downtime or School time, and says both need Android 7 and up. Calls are always available during Downtime, and for the child to text during it their messages app has to be an Unlimited app. During School time the same page says notifications are silent while calls and texts still work.
Google's Set app time limits page, read 21 August 2026, gives Screen time then Time limits then App limits, then pick the app and tap Set limit. The same page says system apps cannot have app limits placed on them, that a limit applies to that app across all of the child's Android and Chrome OS devices, and that Unlimited time apps do not count toward the daily limit and stay available after it is reached.
Two buttons you will reach for often sit under Screen time, below the child's device name on the screen time page above: Lock or Unlock, and Bonus time, which grants extra minutes without touching the daily rule. The same page adds one thing worth knowing before you need it: your Family Link parent access code will unlock the device even when it is not connected to the internet.
Two different controls work together here: approval on new purchases and downloads from Google Play, and filters on what is mature or explicit. Neither is a gate on everything that can reach the phone, and the Family Link listing itself says where the approval gate does not apply.
Google documents this one from a computer. Its Purchase approvals on Google Play page, read 21 August 2026, says: go to g.co/yourfamily, select your child, click Controls on Google Play, and under Purchase and download approvals click Require approval for. The choices it lists are all content, all purchases that use the family payment method, only in-app purchases, or no approval required. Read the limit in Google's own words, on that purchase approvals page: Purchase approval settings only apply to purchases made through Google Play's billing system.
Anything bought outside that system is not covered by the setting.
Three more exemptions are printed on the Family Link Play listing itself, under Important Information, read 21 August 2026, and they matter more than the procedure: While Family Link helps you manage your child's purchases and downloads from Google Play, they will not need approval to install app updates (including updates that expand permissions), apps you have previously approved, or apps that have been shared in Family Library.
The same paragraph ends with the instruction that follows from it: Parents should regularly review their child's installed apps and app permissions in Family Link.
One reading of that is ours rather than Google's, and it is the reason the paragraph is here: Require approval for all content is a gate on what arrives next through Play, not a gate on everything that can appear on the phone, so an update, an app approved once before, and an app shared through Family Library all pass it. Google's own content restrictions page says the matching thing about filters: apps and games downloaded before you set them stay visible. Both point the same way, at the listing's own instruction to review what is installed rather than to trust the switch.
For a supervised account, Google's content restrictions page, read 21 August 2026, gives: open Family Link, at the top left select your child, tap Controls then Google Play, tap the type of content you want to filter, then choose how to filter or restrict access. A parent's Google Account password is needed to set or change it, and the same page says the restrictions work on the Android devices where your child is signed in to their Google Account. Two warnings on it are worth more than the steps: content restrictions do not prevent restricted content appearing as a search result or through a direct link, and apps and games downloaded before you set them stay visible even when they fall outside the rating you chose.
One thing on that page is changing underneath this setting, and it is new enough to be worth watching. In Google's own words, read 21 August 2026: Play Parental control PINs (now known as Play content restriction PINs) are being integrated with Android device level parental controls
, a sentence that runs on into the detail. The same page says existing PINs keep working, that new users default to the Android parental controls PIN, and that deleting a PIN in Android parental controls will turn off Play content restrictions. If the filter you set here ever goes quiet, that is the first place to look.
SafeSearch is not something you switch on. Google's Manage Search on your child's Google Account page, read 21 August 2026, says SafeSearch filtering is turned on and locked by default once supervision is added to the account, that only parents can manage it, and that Incognito mode and Ads Personalization are disabled. What a parent can change is which of three states it sits in: the same page gives Controls then Google Search, where SafeSearch can be left on Filter or changed to Blur or Off. It also names two situations in which those preferences cannot be enforced: when the child is not signed in to their Google Account, and when an alternative search app such as Google Go has been installed. Google's own answer to the second is on that page, as a link out of that very sentence, and it is not the purchase approval setting: it points to approving and limiting specific apps. The route it gives is Screen time then Time limits then App limits, then the app, then turn Allowed off, and the same page adds that turning Search off in the Google app still leaves Search reachable in a browser, so those apps have to be blocked as well. Approval catches the next download; an alternative search app already on the phone, or approved once, or shared through Family Library, has to be blocked where it stands. For the browser, Google's Chrome and your child's Google Account page, read 21 August 2026, lists what Family Link controls: a content filter with a Try to block explicit sites option, allowing or blocking specific sites, approving or denying the child's requests to visit a blocked site, and whether sites may ask for location, camera or microphone. It adds that Incognito mode is turned off when the child is signed in to Chrome with an account managed by Family Link.
Filters reduce exposure rather than remove it, and Google's own label for the browser setting says as much: it is named Try to block explicit sites
. Set them, then pair them with a conversation about what to do when something gets through.
Google's Find and manage your child's location page, read 21 August 2026, gives the setup as: open Family Link, tap Location, then Set up location, and if that does not appear, select the child and turn on Location sharing. The switch that shows or hides the map sits under Location, then the child, then More and Location settings, where See your child's location can be turned on or off.
Arrival and departure alerts need one step more. The same page says you must first add a family place, under Location then Family places then New place, and turn on Location Accuracy or High Accuracy, because location notifications are turned off when location accuracy is off. Then open the place and turn Arrives or Leaves on.
Two limits on that same page matter more than the setup. You will not find the device when it is powered off, not connected to the internet, or has not been used recently. And if the child is signed in on more than one device, only the most actively used one is shown.
Two more points are ours rather than Google's. What the map shows is a device, not a child, so a phone left at a friend's house tells you nothing useful. And tell your child that the location sharing is on. That is advice rather than documentation, but Family Link is not built to be covert, and Google's own pages keep saying so: its page on supervision after 13, read 21 August 2026, says parent and child are both notified when supervision is stopped, and Google emails both of them on the birthday itself. Anything that has to stay hidden from the person carrying the phone is a different kind of tool, and this guide is not about that.
Plan for this one, because Google's own pages do not tell it the same way twice. Google's How Google Accounts work when children turn 13 page, read 21 August 2026, sets out what happens on the birthday: Google emails both the supervising parent and the child to say the account can be updated, and the child then chooses between keeping the current supervision settings, which happens by simply not acting on the email, and updating the account to the over 13 form of supervision by opening the email titled Ready to update your Google Account, selecting Update your account, reviewing the settings and selecting I agree.
The single most useful sentence for a parent is on that page, and it survived a fresh reading today. In Google's words, read 21 August 2026: Children need parent approval to stop supervision until they turn 18.
The same page says it twice, adding as a tip that Children under 18 need parent approval to stop supervision.
If you have read anywhere that a child simply leaves supervision at 13, including on an older version of this page, that is what Google publishes against it.
Where Google's documentation disagrees with itself is the other direction, and this page is not going to pick a winner for you. On its Create a Google Account for your child page, read the same day, Google writes: You or your child, if they're above the age of 13 (or the applicable age in your country), can stop supervision at any time.
Both sentences are Google's, both were fetched on 21 August 2026, and they cannot both be a complete description of one rule. One reading is available and it is ours rather than Google's: the two sentences sit in different contexts, the first about an account created as a supervised child account, the second in a passage about a child over 13 who made their own account and had supervision added to it afterwards. No source we read publishes that reconciliation, so treat it as a way of holding the two rather than as the answer, and check the account itself.
What the two pages do agree on is worth holding onto. A parent of a child over 13 can choose to stop supervision at any time. A parent is notified when supervision stops, and the account creation page adds that the child's supervised devices are then temporarily locked. All of it is worth talking about before the birthday rather than after it.
Age thresholds vary, and Google writes 13 as 13 or the applicable age in your country throughout. Its account creation page carries a separate rule for the European Union, where a child between 13 and 15 is set up through the new device flow. Those are Google's rules for its own accounts. They are not a summary of any country's law, and this page does not offer one.
Setting the controls up is the easy part. Keeping them useful takes a little upkeep, and none of the list below needs a source beyond common sense, so it is labelled as what it is: advice, not documentation.
Family Link is the free default and it is what the steps above configure. The three alternatives below are the ones this guide names, recorded here as nothing more than what each Play listing publishes on the United States storefront, read 21 August 2026. All three are free to install. Two of them sell in-app purchases on Play and the third publishes nothing to buy there at all, which is not the same as being free to use. Nothing in this part rests on how any of them behaves, because a store listing cannot tell you that. For a full roundup of the field, read our best parental controls apps for Android.
Best overall and best free
Verdict: the free default, and the app the five steps above configure. Its listing, read 21 August 2026, is free with nothing to buy and no advertising label. Blunt con: Google's own Get started page, read the same day, says iPhones, iPads and computers other than Chromebooks cannot be supervised with Family Link, so a mixed household is outside its reach.
Rating 4.6 from 5,270,551 reviews · Installs 100,000,000+ · Free, with no in-app purchases listed · Developer Google LLC · Listing updated 10 August 2026 · Data Safety: no data shared with third parties, an independent security review, and the app may collect some data types · Contains ads: No · checked 21 August 2026
Google Play listing · 4.6 (5,270,551) · read 21 August 2026
Family Link is the app the five steps above configure, and its listing is the plainest record of the four here. What its own Play description claims, in its own words and read the same day, is the row this page gives it in the table: Set screen time limits
with daily time limits, with school time and downtime schedules
, managing apps where You can block apps, too
, Set up parental controls on Google services like Chrome, Play, YouTube, and Search
, and See where they are
, which it describes as locating your children on one map as long as they are carrying their device. The same description is blunt about what that adds up to: While Family Link provides tools to manage your child's online experience and keep them safer online, it does not make the internet safe.
The limit to understand is scope, and it has to be stated carefully. Google's Get started page, read 21 August 2026, introduces its list with the words you can use Family Link to do things like
, and then names account settings, apps, screen time, device location and mature content on Google Play. Those are examples rather than the outer edge of the app, and reading them as a fence around the device rather than a window into every app on it is our summary, not Google's.
Best for web filtering
Verdict: the entry to weigh when filtering has to reach past Google's own apps. Its listing, read 21 August 2026, is free to install with no advertising label but sells in-app purchases from $34.99. Blunt con: its Data Safety section declares it may share your data with third parties, on an app whose own description covers a child's messages.
Listed as Qustodio Parental Control App · Rating 3.6 from 23,740 reviews · Installs 5,000,000+ · Free to install, in-app purchases $34.99 to $137.95 per item · Developer Qustodio LLC · Listing updated 12 August 2026 · Data Safety: this app may share these data types with third parties · Contains ads: No · checked 21 August 2026
Google Play listing · 3.6 (23,740) · read 21 August 2026
Qustodio is the entry to weigh when the gap is filtering outside Google's own apps: its listing describes filtering content and blocking games, websites and apps, and it also lists SMS message alerts and social monitoring alerts for WhatsApp, Instagram and Line. Its own FAQ is where the platform reach is stated, and it is worth quoting rather than paraphrasing: asked whether it works on other platforms besides Android, the listing answers Qustodio can protect Windows, Mac, iOS, Kindle and Android.
Read the price next. It is free to install, carries no advertising label, and sells in-app purchases from $34.99 to $137.95 per item, read 21 August 2026. Two setup facts sit further down the same listing: it says to download the Kids App Qustodio companion app onto your child's devices, and its own notes say the app uses the Device Administrator permission, which it says prevents a user uninstalling it without your knowledge, and Accessibility services. The blunt catch is on the same listing: its Data Safety section declares it may share your data with third parties, on an app whose own description includes reading a child's messages.
Best for alerts on messages
Verdict: the alerting entry of the four. Its listing, read 21 August 2026, is free to install with no advertising label, and it prices the monitoring product at $14 a month or $99 annually, with the cheaper Bark Jr tier at $5 a month covering screen time and web filtering only. Blunt con: its Data Safety section declares it may share your data with third parties, and the material is a child's messages.
Listed as Bark - Parental Controls · Rating 3.9 from 11,440 reviews · Installs 500,000+ · Free to install, in-app purchases $5.99 to $99.99 per item · Its listing prices the service at $14 a month or $99 annually, and the Bark Jr tier at $5 a month or $49 annually · Developer Bark Technologies, Inc. · Listing updated 7 July 2026 · Data Safety: this app may share these data types with third parties · Contains ads: No · checked 21 August 2026
Google Play listing · 3.9 (11,440) · read 21 August 2026
Bark is the alerting entry: its listing says it monitors a child's text messages, email, YouTube and more than 30 apps and social media platforms, and that parents receive alerts only when something potentially problematic occurs online. The same listing also describes screen time schedules and a web filter that can allow or block specific sites and whole categories, so alerting is its emphasis rather than its only mode. Read the price on its own terms. On Play it is free to install, carries no advertising label, and sells in-app purchases from $5.99 to $99.99 per item, read 21 August 2026. Its description publishes the service prices separately, and they are the numbers that decide what this entry is for: Bark, which its listing says includes content monitoring, screen time management and web filtering, is priced at $14 a month or $99 annually, while Bark Jr provides screen time management and web filtering for $5 a month or $49 annually. The message alerts this entry is named for sit in the dearer tier, not the cheaper one. Setting it up also takes a second app: the same listing says you will need to download the Bark for Kids app to your child's device to enable monitoring. The catch sits on its own listing too: its Data Safety section declares it may share your data with third parties, and what it handles is a child's private messages.
Best for site and YouTube supervision
Verdict: the entry for a household already running Norton elsewhere. Its listing, read 21 August 2026, is free to install with no advertising label and sells nothing at all on Play, which is not the same as being free to use: what the service charges cannot be read from the store. Blunt con: it is rated 3.2, the lowest of the four here, and its Data Safety section declares it may share your data with third parties.
Listed as Norton Family Parental Control · Rating 3.2 from 26,637 reviews · Installs 1,000,000+ · Free to install, with no in-app purchases listed on Play · Developer NortonMobile · Listing updated 8 July 2026 · Data Safety: this app may share these data types with third parties · Contains ads: No · checked 21 August 2026
Google Play listing · 3.2 (26,637) · read 21 August 2026
Norton Family suits a household already running Norton elsewhere: its listing describes keeping a parent informed of which sites a child is visiting, blocking unsuitable ones, scheduling screen time limits, and a video supervision feature that lists the YouTube videos a child watches and shows a snippet of each. Its own footnotes narrow two of those. Video supervision, it says, monitors videos viewed on YouTube.com and does not monitor or track YouTube videos embedded in other websites or blogs. And web supervision, it says, uses the AccessibilityService API to collect data about websites viewed through browsers on the child's device, and to prevent the child removing permissions without a parent's authentication. A third footnote says the mobile app must be downloaded separately, so the child's device needs its own install. Its Play listing sells nothing at all, read 21 August 2026, which is not the same as costing nothing: what the service charges cannot be read from Play, and the two figures that set expectations, its rating of 3.2 and a Data Safety section declaring it may share your data with third parties, are on the listing rather than behind it.
Yes. Its Play listing shows it free to install, lists no in-app purchases and carries no advertising label. The three alternatives named on this page are all free to install too. Two of them sell in-app purchases on Play and the third publishes nothing to buy there at all, so what its service charges cannot be read from the store either way. Checked 21 August 2026.
Bedtime and Downtime are two names for the same thing, and both are Google's. Its Get started page lists what a parent can do as setting a bedtime or daily screen limits, and the feature that does it is called Downtime and sits under Schedules. In the app you select your child, tap Screen time at the bottom left, then Schedules, then turn on Downtime or School time. Google's page for it says both need Android 7 and up, that calls are always available during Downtime, and that the child's messages app has to be an Unlimited app for texting to work during it. Checked 21 August 2026.
Not on their own, according to the page Google devotes to the question. It says children need parent approval to stop supervision until they turn 18, and repeats it as a tip that children under 18 need parent approval to stop supervision. One other Google page pulls the other way: the page on creating a Google Account for a child says you or your child, if they are above 13 or the applicable age in your country, can stop supervision at any time. Both were read today and both are Google's, so check the account itself rather than trusting either version. They agree on two things: a parent of a child over 13 may stop supervision at any time, and both parent and child are notified when supervision stops. Checked 21 August 2026.
No, and this is the setting parents most often read wrongly. Google's screen time page says a daily limit applies to each Android device or Chromebook the child uses, and gives the example itself: set two hours and the child gets two hours on each device. A phone and a tablet on the same account therefore add up to double what the number suggests. Count the devices before you pick the number. Checked 21 August 2026.
Google's Get started page gives what a parent can do with Family Link as examples rather than as a complete list: account settings, apps, screen time, the device location and mature content on Google Play. Message reading is not among those examples. This page stops there rather than telling you what the app cannot do, because Google documents the controls it offers and not the absences. Two listings on this page do describe message monitoring. Bark's says it monitors text messages, email, YouTube and more than 30 apps and alerts only when something looks potentially problematic. Qustodio's lists SMS message alerts and social monitoring alerts for WhatsApp, Instagram and Line. Both declare in their Data Safety sections that they may share data with third parties. Checked 21 August 2026.
Possibly not exactly. Every path here was read from Google's own Family Link help pages on 21 August 2026 and linked where it is used, but Google changes the app and phone makers change the settings around it, so labels move. Nothing here was read off a handset. If a path has gone, open the linked help page: that is the version Google maintains. Checked 21 August 2026.
Checked 21 August 2026: all four Play listings this page links were re-opened on the United States storefront and re-read on 21 August 2026, and all eleven Google Family Link help pages it cites were fetched and read the same day, so every figure and every menu path carries that date rather than an inherited one. Review counts move between reads and all four moved: each is the number its listing showed on 21 August 2026. Ratings, install bands, prices, in-app purchase ranges, advertising labels, Data Safety answers and listing dates were re-read alongside them and none changed. No app was added and none was cut. Two things were wrong rather than thin, and they come first. Bark was priced at in-app purchases from $5.99, the floor of the field the store publishes, and the table, a pro and the verdict capsule all rested on it. Bark's own description publishes what the service costs, and it is a different number about a different thing: the product that includes content monitoring is $14 a month or $99 annually, while Bark Jr, at $5 a month or $49 annually, is screen time management and web filtering. The message alerts this page picks Bark for are in the dearer tier. The page now prints both figures, says which buys what, and the capsule quotes the price of the thing the pick is for. The comparison of the two in-app purchase floors, which ranked a monthly figure against a per item one, is gone from Bark's section and Qustodio's. The second is app approval. The page called it approval before anything new arrives, and used that to answer Google's warning that a SafeSearch preference cannot be enforced once an alternative search app such as Google Go is installed. The Family Link listing's own Important Information paragraph, read 21 August 2026, says a child needs no approval to install app updates, including updates that expand permissions, apps you have previously approved, or apps shared in Family Library, and it tells parents to review the installed apps regularly. Google's SafeSearch page, read the same day, answers its own Google Go warning with a link to approving and limiting specific apps, not with purchase approvals. The page now quotes the listing, gives Screen time then Time limits then App limits for an app already on the phone, and says approval catches the next download rather than everything on the device. The decision table was rebuilt around what separates these four. Its old fourth column was headed Ads and all four cells read No, which filtered nothing, so it is replaced by the Data Safety answer, which splits the four one against three; the advertising reality is a boolean with no third state and it is printed in every app's own fact line instead. The Price column now says Norton Family is priced off Play rather than only that Play sells nothing, because that correction used to sit thousands of words below the table. The verdict capsule was rebuilt twice. The first rebuild met the owner's ruling of 2026-08-18 to the letter, labelled Our answer, three picks joined by because and closed with the date checked, and missed its point: all three reasons said the same thing, a restatement of price and advertising, and the Family Link sentence did not separate Family Link from Norton Family, whose row also reads free to install with no advertising label. Each reason now carries the fact that decides that role, with the price and advertising reality beside it. No independent test of this category could be opened from here on the run day: pcmag.com, which the Qustodio listing itself names, was tried twice and refused both times, so each reason cites the store listing the page links, which is the source the standard names for that case. That is a record of what we could read, not a finding that parental controls has no independent reviewer, and the previous version of this line had it the wrong way round. Two structural fixes came out of the same reading. Every app section now opens with one sentence carrying the verdict, the price and advertising reality and the bluntest con, because a reader arriving on a jump link reads the first eighty words and no more, and the blunt con used to sit around word 280. And the page now carries a jump link list of its own sections: the only navigation before was the comparison table, which links the four apps and nothing else. Smaller corrections, all from listings read on 21 August 2026. Qustodio's platform list was attached to its filtering; the listing attaches it to monitoring, and its own FAQ answers that Qustodio can protect Windows, Mac, iOS, Kindle and Android, so the page quotes the FAQ. All three alternatives need a second app on the child's device and the page did not say so: the Bark for Kids app, the Kids App Qustodio companion app, and Norton's mobile app, which its footnote says must be downloaded separately. Qustodio's notes declare the Device Administrator permission and Accessibility services, and Norton's footnotes say web supervision uses the AccessibilityService API and that video supervision does not cover YouTube videos embedded in other websites or blogs. The Family Link row is now traceable: its cell is quoted from that listing's own description in its section, including the listing's sentence that Family Link does not make the internet safe. The 17 August pass withdrew three claims about software behaviour and recorded a fourth as disputed rather than corrected. All four were re-derived at Google's own documentation on 21 August 2026 rather than trusted, because a withdrawal sitting in a changelog is not evidence, and they did not come back the same way. Two of the three withdrawals stand exactly as they were. The requirement once given as Android 9 or newer
is on none of the pages read today: it is an Android device 6.0 and up, with Android 7 and up for screen time limits, Downtime and School time, and Android 14 and up or WearOS 5 and up before a parent can manage who a child calls and texts. The button once called Lock now
, reached through Controls, is documented today as Lock or Unlock, below the child's device name under Screen time. The routing that withdrawal also swept away, through Settings then Google, is narrowed rather than upheld: Google's screen time page, read 21 August 2026, gives that route on the child's own handset for Android versions before 8.1, with Settings then Digital Wellbeing and parental controls from 8.1 onward. What was wrong was its role as the first step of the parent's setup, not its existence. The third withdrawal is reversed on its substance: sometimes labelled Downtime
was withdrawn as if the equivalence were unsourced, and it is not. Google's Get started page, read 21 August 2026, lists what a parent can do as Set a bedtime or daily screen limits, and the feature that does it is named Downtime under Schedules, so the page states that mapping in Google's wording and only the vague phrasing stays withdrawn. The claim recorded as disputed is the one this page most needs to get right, and a fresh reading strengthened it. Google's page on children turning 13, read 21 August 2026, states that children need parent approval to stop supervision until they turn 18, and repeats it as a tip that children under 18 need parent approval to stop supervision. The claim this page once made, that a teenager at 13 could graduate the account
out of supervision and that supervision could not be kept against the account holder's wishes, stays withdrawn and is now contradicted twice on one Google page rather than once. The disagreement with Google's account creation page, which says a child above 13 can stop supervision at any time, was re-fetched the same day and both sentences still stand, so the page prints both and tells the reader to check the account; what is new is a reading, flagged as ours and not Google's, that the two sentences describe different starting points, and the statement that no source we read publishes that reconciliation. Five facts are added, each from a Google page read on 21 August 2026 and linked where it is used: a daily limit applies to each device rather than to the child; SafeSearch has three states rather than one locked default; Play content restriction PINs are being integrated with Android device level parental controls; a parent access code unlocks a device with no internet connection; and Incognito mode is off in Chrome for a managed account. The page also says plainly that the limits Google lists are the shape of the category, because the platform sets them, and that anything which has to stay hidden from the person carrying the phone is a different kind of tool. The How we verify box names the eleven Google help pages beside the four listings, says where Bark's service prices come from, and keeps the sentence that nothing here rests on our own use of the apps. No testing claim was removed anywhere, because the version read today made none. No image, figure or screenshot was touched: the content blocks carry none, the hero image and the related grid are byte for byte what they were, and the step diagram withdrawn on 17 August stays out until it is redrawn.
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