Qustodio Parental Control (for Android) - Review 2022

A parental control tool that only runs on your family PC is nearly useless in the modern, multidevice world. Qustodio, an impressive parental control utility, boasts just nearly every feature you might want, including spider web content filtering, robust app blocking, and a detailed activity log. Yous handle all configuration and monitoring either via Qustodio'south online dashboard or the parental mode of its mobile apps, which means you lot can set rules and review your child's activeness from anywhere. Although it is expensive and lacks stiff social media tracking tools, Qustodio'southward wide range of features and excellent customizability secure information technology an Editors' Choice laurels for parental control software.

Pricing and Platforms

Qustodio for Families is expensive, simply it does have a permanently free option. The costless version limits monitoring to simply a unmarried device and but keeps seven days of activity history. Y'all also become basic controls like spider web filtering and time quotas for certain activities. Qustodio structures its paid subscription plans around family size, with Small (five devices), Medium (10 devices), and Big (xv devices) options. These plans cost $54.95, $96.95, and $137.95 per year, respectively. Some advantages these plans offering over the free version are up to 30 days of activity history, application-based fourth dimension restrictions, and location tracking. Previously, Qustodio'due south cheapest plan was the $39.95-per-year tier for three device licenses, so the toll of entry has gone up considerably. That option might accept been ideal for parents of an only kid or for monitoring several children's phones.

Qustodio is not just for families. Qustodio for Schools aims to keep students on runway when using schoolhouse computers, while Qustodio for Business organisation is designed to make sure employees are working, not watching true cat videos—or worse. These products have similar features to Qustodio for Families. The biggest divergence is in the pricing.

Norton Family Premier is cheaper ($49.99 per yr) than Qustodio and does not limit the number of devices yous tin monitor. Kaspersky Rubber Kids undercuts both of those services considerably; it only charges $14.99 per year and supports an unlimited number of child devices. The two-function hardware and software solution, Circle Domicile Plus, is more expensive; the device costs $129 and includes a i-year premium membership, but after that, you need to pay $9.99 per month to maintain the service.

Qustodio runs on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and Kindle devices. If you need to keep tabs on a Chromebook, consider Mobicip. Note that Norton Family manages Windows, macOS, and iOS devices, merely that it cannot monitor macOS devices. Keep in listen that some features are platform-specific and that the iOS app is more limited than its Android counterpart—as is common, given how Apple tends to lock down iOS settings. Take a look at Apple's congenital-in Screen Fourth dimension feature as an alternative to a third-party parental control solution.

To test Qustodio'southward desktop capabilities, we used a Lenovo IdeaPad 320 running Windows ten. For mobile, we primarily used a Google Pixel running Android 10 for evaluating Qustodio. Nosotros had as well previously tested it on an iPhone 8 running iOS 11.

Setup and Devices

Once you buy your Qustodio subscription, you lot need to install a local client on every device you intend to rails. Windows and macOS installs are easy. Just download and run the installer, log in, and add a name for the device. You lot can apply configuration settings to all user accounts on a computer or configure each login account separately, afterward from the web interface. Nosotros nonetheless don't like that Qustodio includes a silent install option, which will hibernate Qustodio's presence from the monitored user, equally this setup seems closer to spying, rather than consensual monitoring. Norton Family does a much better chore of explaining what rules are in place to a child.

There's only one Qustodio app on the Google Play Store and App store, and y'all specify whether you are on a parent or a child device during setup. We prefer the single app approach, since it is simpler for parents to detect it, rather than having to search for split versions. You demand to grant Qustodio all sorts of permissions on Android, including Apps with usage access, Accessibility admission, and device-level access (telephone call, SMS, location, contacts, and media), in add-on to enabling it as a device admin app. On iOS, y'all demand to download and install an MDM device profile to correctly configure Qustodio.

These requirements are generally standard for any full-featured parental control app on mobile devices. Make sure to lock down the Android settings with your password and to remove the guest account, since none of Qustodio's restrictions and rules apply to it. Kids tin can access this generic account even if the device has reached its time limit and fifty-fifty create new users from Android's Quick Settings pull-down menu if y'all don't block that adequacy.

Web Interface

Qustodio has updated its online web portal since the concluding time we reviewed information technology, a welcome change from the seriously dated former version. The new dashboard looks very make clean with a pleasing blue and white color scheme. Elements are consequent and well-organized. Operation is quick as well. Oddly, many how-to guides and graphics on the site (and even the installer on Windows) still rely on images of the old portal.

Yous navigate the interface using a series of icons in a left-hand carte du jour: Your Family, Your Devices, Your Business relationship, Help Centre, and Logout. Unfortunately, there is no selection to enable two-factor authentication in the Your Account department, but yous can make changes to your subscription and opt out of email notifications hither. The Aid Middle is well designed, with easy-to-access categories, readily available user guides, and a search bar.

When you add a child to your account, yous need to specify a name, gender, and birth year, as well as choose an avatar. Norton lets yous upload a profile photo, just Qustodio does not have this selection. Adding a device is easy. You lot either download the software to the current device or send a download link to a different one.

To alter rules and restrictions for a child, click on their profile in the Your Family unit section. Yous navigate this expanse with the three left-hand menu items: Summary, Activity Timeline, and Rules. The summary section displays dedicated sections for Time spent, Top activity, Questionable Activity, YouTube Summary, and Calls & SMS. You can click into well-nigh of these sections to encounter more than entries. From the Summary page, you can filter the data to show the last twenty-four hour period, or the past 7, 15, or xxx days.

The Activity Timeline lists all your child's activities, across the web, app, search, phone call and SMS, and location categories. The timeline is interactive likewise, so you tin block or permit apps correct from this screen, for case. The Activeness timeline as well supports filters, in case you only desire to see ane of the categories of information, such as app activity.

The Rules dropdown is where yous make changes to restriction categories, including Daily Time Limits, Restricted Times, Spider web Filtering, YouTube Monitoring, Games & Apps, Calls & SMS, Location, Social Monitoring, and the Panic Button.

Web Filtering

Past default, Qustodio blocks all admission to websites matching any of ten undesirable categories, amongst them Drugs, Gambling, Pornography, Proxies/Loopholes, and Violence. Some other 19 categories, including Social Network and File Sharing, are available for parents who desire to fine-tune web content filtering. Your options for each category are Allow, Warning Me, and Block. We wish Qustodio included brusque descriptions of each category to brand it easier to choose, merely nigh are self-explanatory. There are boosted options for blocking unsupported browsers, blocking uncategorized website domains, forcing Prophylactic Search (Google, Bing, and YouTube), and opting into notifications when it blocks a site. Nevertheless, you cannot cake pages based on specific keywords or profanity. Net Nanny features a profanity filter. Note that search engines such every bit privacy-focused DuckDuckGo are also across Qustodio'due south controls.

Qustodio's content filtering works beyond mainstream browsers such as Chrome and Edge, blocking secure (HTTPS) websites from restricted categories. All the same, these categories practise not cover everything and we would like the ability to set up custom filters, something that Cyberspace Nanny allows. As we mention below, no category prevents access to VPN sites, which has some major consequences. Cyberspace Nanny'due south filters understand context too. For instance, that service immune usa to access the Wikipedia page on gambling, simply blocked actual gambling sites. Qustodio just blocks everything, which is not ideal. Nosotros also wish it integrated a Asking Access option.

Qustodio is not truly browser-independent; It blocks browsers it does non support. For example, it prevented us from launching both the Brave and Tor browsers. Other parental command services we've tried did not block either, thus allowing u.s. to get around restrictions. Qustodio's implementation works well in this regard.

All the same, we discovered some elementary means to circumnavigate Qustodio'due south web filter. For instance, nosotros were able to sign upwards for a free VPN, download the extension in Chrome, and browse freely. This is problematic. A browser we downloaded from the Microsoft Store on Windows also enabled the states to use the spider web unrestricted. Yet, i advantage that Qustodio has over most other parental command solutions is that it can block desktop apps, not just mobile ones. So you could cake the Windows Store app entirely, if yous'd similar.

We tried the spider web filters on Android, too. Qustodio blocked u.s. from using the Firefox Focus and Tor browsers and successfully blocked sites in forbidden categories in Chrome, even after we installed a VPN. Note that Qustodio's web filtering capabilities piece of work with the Chrome and Safari browsers on iOS.

Time Usage Limits

Qustodio divides its time-brake tools into a few dissimilar sections. Daily Time Limits, allows y'all to set up a cap on device usage for each day of the week. You can besides block device access entirely for that twenty-four hour period via the lock icon in the lower right-hand area of the page. Qustodio lets you lot cull what happens when the time limit is up. You tin either lock navigation or lock the device. Qustodio can optionally ship you lot a notification if a kid reaches that limit.

The Lock Navigation and Lock Device settings do unlike things depending on the platform. Locking navigation on Windows and Macs blocks internet admission and spider web browsers, but the lock device option ways your kids won't exist able to sign in to the device. On Android, locking navigation blocks most apps, except for the habitation screen, notification bar, and recent app lists. Children tin stall receive incoming calls with this setting. Under the lock device setting, everything on the screen is blocked except for the Panic Button. On iOS devices, the lock navigation app simply prevents apps from accessing the cyberspace. The lock device setting hides all apps categorized with a parental rating of older than four years.

Qustodio's Restricted Times section lets you command what times during the solar day your child can use their device. Qustodio divides the day into Morning, Afternoon, and Nighttime, but you demand to click twice on whatever 1 surface area to select a time slot, which is a chip annoying. You besides cannot elevate across a 24-hour interval or across a calendar week to easily cake out big periods of time.

Both of these time blocking features worked as advertised in our testing. Notation that Qustodio also lets parents set time restrictions on private apps, as we discuss below. Locategy as well has this capability.

App Blocking

For app-blocking settings on Android, Windows, and macOS devices, head to the Games & Apps section. Here, y'all tin search for apps your kid has used across any of their supported devices. Instead of pre-populating a listing of mutual apps, Qustodio adds apps to the list as your kid starts using them.

For any app entry on the list, you lot can toggle whether you'd similar to utilize no restrictions, set a total time limit for each day of the calendar week, or merely block it outright. This feature could be useful if yous wanted to always let your child access the calculator app for homework, but wanted to keep the time they spend on social media to a minimum, without totally locking them out. We had no bug blocking apps on our Windows and Android test devices. An app whitelist, such as what Mobicip offers for mobile devices, would be a helpful additional feature.

Qustodio's app blocking extends to iOS, but merely for select apps. The listing of uniform apps includes most of the basics, but you certainly might encounter some entries that are not supported. For instance, Qustodio's tools no longer piece of work with games published past EA. Boomerang and Kaspersky Safe Kids allow you lot cake iOS apps based on their associated age ratings.

Location Tracking

Qustodio'due south location-based monitoring varies by platform. On the web, these settings are nether the Location tab, only on mobile, there is a dedicated Family Locator department. On the web dashboard, you encounter a map marked with the last known locations of your children. If you click on ane of the profiles, a timeline of the kid'southward reported location history pops up with up to thirty days of past information.

Qustodio now includes geofencing capabilities for mobile devices, a feature it calls My Places. Geofencing is unproblematic to understand. You define a virtual purlieus around a geographic place and then receive a notification when a child (or their device) leaves or enters that area. With Qustodio, you selection a place on the map, give it a name, and define how large a boundary to create around it (minimum of 350 anxiety).

Boomerang supports geofencing every bit well, letting you describe custom (and more than exact) boundaries effectually a location, rather than simply a circular radius. Kaspersky Safe Kids allows parents to set up associated fourth dimension spans, and then you can ensure that a kid is in school during school hours, for case.

Facebook and YouTube Monitoring

Qustodio'south Facebook monitoring tool can show you who your child messages with (but not the content of those conversations) and what they post on their wall. Since modernistic kids use a wide range of other social media sites, such as Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, and Twitter, this is non overwhelmingly helpful.

The child has to log in to Facebook at least once on the desktop to enable the tracking plug-in, but later that, it records their activity on the site regardless of the device they use to access it. If you do have the child's login credentials, you can also set this up yourself from either the desktop or the mobile app. Qustodio is clever in the way it enforces monitoring. A kid cannot access Facebook if the plug-in is disabled or removed.

Qustodio can also monitor your child's activity on YouTube, though the capabilities vary past platform. For Windows, macOS, and Android devices, you can see what videos your kids watch and what they search for on YouTube's website and the Android app. For monitored iOS devices, you can only run into searches and their viewing history on the mobile YouTube site.

Qustodio gives you the option to specifically restrict the YouTube app or website from this department, likewise as set a fourth dimension limit on usage. This is more user-friendly than making you go to the regular app-blocking or web filter sections. Parents can click on YouTube activity entries to watch the videos for themselves.

Qustodio on Mobile

Qustodio's Android app is well-organized, modern, and highly functional. The default page, Your Family, shows icons for all the children associated with your account. You tin set upwards another user contour from this screen via the Add a Kid on the bottom center, which requires you to choose an avatar, name, gender, and birth year. Yous click on a kid's icon in this section to configure restrictions. There are no limitations to the app here; the mobile app offers total control of all the rules categories. The app has been updated to permit yous to delete child profiles and reassign what device is assigned to which child.

A hidden left-hand menu gives you access to all the sections from the web, including Your Devices, Family Locator, Your Account, and the Help Middle. At the bottom, in that location is a persistent notification to upgrade to the adjacent tier of service, even if you are already a paying client, which is irritating.

On an Android device, Qustodio tin can monitor calls and SMS messages. Parents tin can even choose to record the content of each text, block all outgoing or incoming calls, every bit well every bit restrict or allow specific contacts. Reports appear in the Activity Timeline. We confirmed this works in past tests. FamilyTime has similar call and SMS monitoring features but goes one step further past duplicating call logs and SMS messaging history. Keep in listen that Qustodio'south monitoring features exercise non employ to third-political party messaging apps such as Signal or WhatsApp.

Another feature specific to Android is the Panic Button. To start using it, ascertain upwards to iv trusted contacts, each with an email address or mobile phone number. A child who's lost or in trouble can tap the SOS bubble from within the Qustodio app. Once activated, it sends the child'due south location and an alert to those contacts. The app will keep to broadcast the child's location every five minutes until the child turns off the panic way or information technology is deactivated via the spider web portal.

Qustodio's parent mode on iOS looks identical to its Android analogue and its features work as advertised. In terms of monitoring iOS devices, Qustodio supports time quotas and scheduling, web filtering on Chrome and Safari, and device locking. As mentioned, there are other limitations too, due to how Apple locks downwards the OS. For example, you cannot monitor or block calls and texts. That said, we really hope to come across Qustodio add some version of the Panic button to the iOS app in the future.

A Complete Package

Qustodio enables parents to take precise command over their child'south activity across desktop and mobile devices. Qustodio'southward all-time features are its robust time restrictions geofencing tools, and app-blocking on web and mobile platforms. Its improved web interface and well-designed mobile apps are high points too. Qustodio's main drawbacks are that it is expensive and that a VPN extension can get around its web filters on desktop browsers. Still, Qustodio's simplicity and effectiveness in other areas help information technology retain its Editors' Choice award.

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Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/migrated-90521-android-apps/10515/qustodio-parental-control-for-android

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