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

Some of the most important features are broken. The settings were made more complicated. There's no longer an option to allow "Always allowed" apps during downtime. My child can't for example adjust the alarm clock after screen time ends. This is RIDICILOUS. Locating has become much more SLOW. It's often stuck on updating. it's slow and inaccurate only through Family Link - the phones themselves don't have any problem getting a location and I can use a 3rd party app to locate them faster.

Overall, this app is good. It works exactly as it should. Even with the change in the interface and controls its fine. However, one function is missing. The ability to reset past app permissions. There are so many apps that are not what they claim to be or that change over time. And yes, blocking them works, but removing past permissions would be much more useful.

The location update and notifications no longer work. That's one of the main things I use for both of my teenagers. I've been trying to update their location on the app for an hour now and it just spins. This appears to be a common theme all of a sudden with the other reviews I'm seeing. Hopefully this is addressed quickly. Edited: since the update this morning, nothing is working!! This is so frustrating!

What's new

Several stability improvements and bug fixes.