As much as I love Google (not even a little, my love for that company is negative and becoming more negative per second) I would love to run far far away from it. Here’s another ball and chain I need to break.
Where can I find a simple parental control access system for my phone and or computer that I allow my kids to use?
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I use GrapheneOS with a restricted user profile and OpenTimeLimit for my daughter. The phone always connects to our home network using wireguard and automate.
Works reasonably well, can do all kinds of complex scenarios with time limits, different groups that are allowed always, at different times, never, etc.
Even blocks all kinds of system apps such that by default even Wallpaper changes are blocked.
Only thing that is open for me is web access. Currently, no browser is installed in the profile, but at some point she might need it. Will probably do NextDNS or similar. Too much hassle to do all that locally.
Most other things run on my homeserver (dawarich for family tracking, ha access, adblocking pihole, jellyfin, immich, etc etc)
There are parental controls, but it’s rare. FOSS projects usually aren’t very keen on building systems of authority, even parental ones.
For smartphones check out /e/OS (Murena Smartphones). They added parental controls recently, not sure how good those are though.
For computers your best bet’s probably a Linux with Gnome. They also added something recently.
You might be able to combine both with a custom DNS service, surely there’s something out there for that usecase (NextDNS?). But that’s already getting pretty complex.
Not a perfect solution, but I use NextDNS which has profiles, and can set allowed services and times of day for them, Online Games, Video Streaming etc. This is set in the phone’s DNS setting so works via WiFi or cellular.
I’ve started to use the excellent DNS Toggle on my phone to quickly enable/disable it for the really annoying sites that block ad blockers etc.
In terms of app control itself, I still use Family Link begrudgingly as well like you for Android phones. I access it via the web page which thankfully still works so I don’t have to have the Google app installed.
It’s called MDM. Unfortunately most companies try to limit their MDM solutions to enterprises, but FleetDM is an okay choice.
depending on your router, couldn’t you do this at that level? a combination of public dns (dns4eu) or adguard filter lists? you could create two wifi networks, one controlled one not; most routers let you block whole services too like tiktok, etc
That only prevents phone connectivity over WiFi. Turning off WiFi and using mobile data bypasses it. Using offline applications and games (or even Plex/Jellyfin etc) can bypass it too.
Family link does more than stop internet access at certain times, it allows setting usage limits by device and by app.
oh fair point, yeah, i was thinking about just tablets and computers; that makes sense.
dns4eu
Use Mullvad DNS instead, it’s a very blatant honeypot.
mullvad is into the same shit dhh is into; i use the unfiltered dns4eu, quad9, and adguard servers, round robin (since i have my adguard filters set up at the router level and browser level).
Mullvad’s CEO finances fascists, please don’t.
Aren’t they going to shutdown their DNS and use someone’s else’s?
Overkill, otherwise there’s parental controls built-in to iOS/Android
Yeah it’s called FamilyLink and works over Google servers.
There are on-device controls, built-in to the OS
Seemingly only on the newest version of android…we have a tablet running android 15, and it doesn’t have local parental control.
Yeah that looks though.
For your computer: https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/parental-controls.html.en
For the Phone I’d create a second profile on the phone and only install the apps there which I’d allow my children to use.
what type of phone/OS are your phone and computer?
there’s some hands-on controls too that may be useful but it starts with just giving them their own profile or login that’s ideally with as few permissions as possible. For android, there’s profiles which you may be able to lock down a bit more than your own profile. Apple had family mode settings that you may be able to turn on and off when they have the device. For a computer, same approach. Standard user account with whatever you installed using an admin account and lock down content via DNS like cloudflare for families, https://adguard-dns.io/public-dns.html, a self hosted one or something like https://nextdns.io/.
Its Android
if you want to lock your phone to one app when you hand it to them you can use app pinning in settings. otherwise look into creating a user profile and see what you can do to lock that down.
No, not really.
I have a whole complex setup including unique profiles and auth with unique limitations per user on services, like what books are available on the eBook server, what shows/movies they can see, even which block list is applied for DNS.
But things like app restrictions on a tablet are entirely manual. I kiosked off and will manually install via adb.
There isnt really an equivalent single tool I’m aware of.
What is it?
Parental Controls
Probably not then
deleted by creator
Nothing really exists.
The likely extreme thing I did was setup ManageEngine’s MDM+ (free for<25 users) and put my sons phone on a “device profile” which locks it down. It’s decently intuitive, but does require a “server” so there’s a bit of setup too. I use YT at work too so for me it was done in 30 minutes.
