Bark - Parental Controls

Bark Technologies, Inc.

About this app

Bark provides families with the tools they need to raise kids in the digital age. Our comprehensive service lets you monitor content, manage screen time, and filter websites so you can get peace of mind while your child is online.

CONTENT MONITORING

Bark monitors your child’s text messages, email, YouTube, and 30+ apps and social media platforms for issues like cyberbullying, suicidal ideation, adult content, sexual predators, profanity, threats of violence, and more. Parents receive alerts only when something potentially problematic occurs online. You won’t have full access to everything on your child’s phone — just the things you might need to know about.

SCREEN TIME MANAGEMENT

Families can set healthy time limits and create schedules for when their children’s devices can connect to the internet (through both cell service and Wi-Fi).

WEB FILTERING

Our web filter lets you select which websites your child can access on their devices. You can allow or block specific sites — or even whole categories like streaming services, online gaming, sexual content, and more.

BARK HOME

When you purchase Bark Home, a small device sold separately that connects to your Wi-Fi router, you can use our app to manage screen time and filter websites and apps on all of the Wi-Fi-connected devices in your home, from smart TVs and video game consoles to laptops and tablets. Bark Home requires an active Bark subscription.

PRICING

Bark, our comprehensive online safety solution, includes content monitoring, screen time management, and web filtering. Bark is $14/month — or $99 annually.

Bark Jr provides screen time management and web filtering for $5/month or $49 annually.

SETTING UP BARK

After you download the Bark app for parents and guardians, you’ll need to download the Bark for Kids app to your child’s device to enable monitoring, screen time management, and more. Visit www.bark.us/android to install it.

Ratings and reviews

I really like how well it monitors. The UI of the routines and scheduling could use some improvement. I'd like the option to make additional custom routines. Also, it's really annoying to be taken to an advertising page sometimes in the app such as when approving a child's app. I don't like being advertised to for a service that I'm already subscribed to and paying for.

It's a pain to set up. The location hasn't worked once. It incorrectly displays who said something. my son has shown me the actual conversation and he was accused several times of something he didn't say. If you think it's going to block anything... nope. But it'll tell you every time it happens anyway. I have so many alerts even after turning them to most severe only. The latest bullying alert was from "hey man whats up with that?" A refund at this point would be great. 😮‍💨

At first, Bark seemed great. It was a pain in the behind to set up but once I got it set up I liked the location until it stopped updating, the one tap check-in is cool if your kid uses it, the monitoring was entertaining because it flags things it doesn't need to, it allows too much freedom and my son accessed cornhub which I had to manually block even with sexual content blocked. It is not worth the cost. It is not user-friendly and very unreliable. I will be going back to Family Link.

What’s new

Push notification fixes