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 looks as if it should be good, but it doesn't actually work properly, so it falls quite a bit short of meeting my expectations. For example, the feature for application limits will shut down the app when the limit is reached, but it will never enable it again until you turn the limit off. It never resets the accumulated time on the childs phone. Also, if you change the downtime hours, you have to keep fiddling with it to get them to save properly. Good idea, poor execution.

Just about everything has worked fairly well so far with the exception of removing a device. You can't do it unless it's been inactive for at least 30 days. It drops off at that point. The developers didn't take into account that device upgrades are made, devices are lost, and/or damaged beyond use so it necessitates more autonomy when adding & removing a device. 8/14/24 No response from the developer after reaching out via the app. Still can't remove a device.

This app was excellent and easy to use up until they changed it. I was able to change limits easily and alter times settings in an instant. Now they've moved everything to submenus and in a format making it difficult for me to set up for my 3 kids. I'd love to meet the developer that said "wait a second, this app is too easy to use...let me 'fix' that.."

What's new

Several stability improvements and bug fixes.