Google Family Link

Google LLC

About this app

Google Family Link is a parental controls app that helps you keep your family safer online. We know that every family’s relationship with technology is unique, so we designed tools like Family Link that give you the flexibility to choose the right balance for your family, and help them create healthy digital habits. Family Link’s easy to use tools allow you to understand how your child is spending time on their device, see their device location, manage privacy settings, and more.


With Family Link, you can:

Establish Digital Ground Rules
• Set screen time limits — Family Link lets you set downtime for your child’s device and time limits for apps, so you can help them find a healthy balance.
• Guide them to age-appropriate content — Approve or block apps your child wants to download. Family Link also allows you to choose the right YouTube experience for your child: a supervised experience on YouTube, or YouTube Kids.

Manage and secure your child’s account
• Protect their privacy — Permissions management in Family Link allow you to make meaningful choices about your child’s data. View and manage permissions for websites and extensions accessed through Chrome as well as apps downloaded on your child’s device.
• Secure their account — Family Link gives you access to manage your child's account and data settings. As a parent, you can help change or reset your child’s password if they forget it, edit their personal information or even delete their account if you feel necessary.

Stay connected on the go
• See where they are — It’s helpful to be able to find your family when they’re on the go. With Family Link, you can locate your children on one map, as long as they’re carrying their device.
• Get notifications and alerts — Family Link delivers critical notifications including when your child arrives or leaves a certain location. You can also ring devices and view the device’s remaining battery life.


Important Information

• Family Link’s tools vary depending on your child’s device. See a list of compatible devices at https://families.google/familylink/device-compatibility/
• 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. In addition, purchase approvals will apply only when your child makes a purchase through Google Play’s billing system and will not apply to purchases made through alternate billing systems. Parents should regularly review their child’s installed apps and app permissions in Family Link.
• You should carefully review the apps on your child’s supervised device and disable those you don’t want them to use. Note that you may not be able to disable some pre-installed apps such as Play, Google, etc.
• To see the location of your child or teen’s device, the device must be powered on, recently active, and connected to the internet through data or wifi.
• Family Link parental controls are only available for supervised Google accounts. With supervised Google Accounts, children get access to Google products like Search, Chrome, and Gmail, and parents can set up basic digital ground rules to supervise them.
• While Family Link provides tools to manage your child’s online experience and keep them safer online, it does not make the internet safe. Family Link can not determine the content on the internet, but it can give parents the opportunity to make decisions about how their child spends time on their device, and determine what path to online safety looks best for your family.

Ratings and reviews

This app was wonderful with one child and one device. It let us control screen time and set some downtime. Now that we have multiple children using multiple devices it has become limited in its usefullness. I need to be able to control screen time across all devices on each account, not have them use up screen time on one device and have the ability to just move to an other. I guess I shouldn't rely on app to replace to old school parenting of just taking the devices and remotes away.

Screen time limits and down time seem to conflict with one another in ways that aren't always obvious - which limit is it that is causing the app to want to lock in 5 minutes, and why didn't the bonus time I just allocated fix it? Screen time limits set for specific apps often don't sync between devices until you go into the Family app to give the system a poke - sometimes you have to remove the limit and then re-enable it before it works. More issues than characters available to list them.

This turns on and off at will. Support is no help. Edit: I already chatted with support and tried to get help. I took pictures. The phones turn off and on when they want. They say time is up when no limit was set. It shows open computers on my phone app, but the computers are indeed locked. If I unlock the computers in the morning, they dinnertime turn off before the kids get on. They also turn off at night. I have no time set. That never worked reliably, so I must unlock the computers. More..

What's new

Several stability improvements and bug fixes.