Ara Parental Control

ClearPath Studio

In-app purchases

About this app

Ara Parental Control

Help your family build healthy digital habits and stay safe online — manage screen time, block apps, track location, and monitor usage, all from your phone.

KEY FEATURES

• Lock From the Device Itself — Trigger a lock directly on the child's phone, no parent phone required.
• Parent PIN Unlock — Unlock the locked device with a PIN entered right on its lock screen. No parent phone needed — useful when you're with your child but without your phone, or when a second parent knows the PIN.
• Data Block Only — Cut off internet access without locking the phone, so the device stays usable for offline apps while online distractions stop.
• Scheduled Lock & Unlock — Set bedtime or homework windows; the device auto-locks and unlocks on schedule, no manual action.
• Allowed Apps on Lock Screen — Choose which apps stay available while the device is locked (e.g. a learning app), with their time limits still enforced.
• App Schedules — Allow specific apps only during set time windows (e.g. games after school, 4–6 PM).
• App Timers & Daily Limits — Cap each app (e.g. TikTok 30 min/day) or set a global daily screen-time limit. Kids get a warning, then the app blocks.
• App Blocking — Block specific apps entirely.
• Web & Word Filter — Block websites by address (facebook.com) and filter pages containing specific words.
• Browsing History Review — See which sites your child has visited.
• GPS Location Tracking — View your child's real-time location on a map.
• Geofencing — Get alerts when your child arrives at or leaves safe zones like school or home.
• PC Controls — Manage your child's Windows PC alongside their phone.
• Real-Time Monitoring — See which apps are used and for how long.
• Instant Lock — Parents can remotely lock the device with a custom message.
• Task-Based Unlock — Let kids unlock after completing assigned tasks.
• Family Sharing — Multiple parents manage the same devices.
• Tamper Protection — Prevent uninstall; easy parent removal anytime.

SIMPLE SETUP
Install on your child's device, pair with your phone, and start protecting. Works on phones and tablets.

WHY ARA USES SPECIAL PERMISSIONS

VPN Service permission: Ara includes a built-in, device-local firewall used to enforce internet restrictions such as Data Block and web filtering. When a parent blocks an app or enables web filtering, Ara routes the device's network traffic through a local virtual interface on the phone itself and drops the packets for blocked apps. This is a local firewall only - no traffic is sent to or through any external VPN server, and your data never leaves the device. The VPN permission is required by Android to create this local filtering interface; it is not used to provide remote VPN, proxy, or tunneling services.

Accessibility Service permission: Ara uses the Android Accessibility Service solely to support its parental-control features: (1) to detect when a blocked or time-limited app is launched so the lock can be re-applied, and (2) to capture the current browser URL for parental web-activity monitoring. The Accessibility Service is used only for these disclosed parental-safety functions and is not used to collect unrelated personal data. Parents enable it explicitly in device Settings, and it can be disabled at any time.

Location permission: Ara is a parental-control app. To let a parent see their child's device location and location history, Ara accesses and collects the device's precise (GPS) and approximate location, including in the background while the app is closed or not in use. This location data is used only for parental location monitoring and is sent to the linked parent via Ara's relay server; it is not used for any other purpose.

What’s new

Stability:
- Fixed the AppBlockService early-start failure on Android 14+. From now on the early Settings-block is enabled as soon as the app launches, not deferred to a background retry.
- No user-visible changes. The app launches slightly faster on cold boot and the Settings block is guaranteed to come up before the launcher is interactive.