How to Set Up Parental Controls on Android

What Android parental controls do — and what they can't

Android parental controls are the free, built-in settings that let you supervise a teenager's phone — approving apps, limiting screen time, filtering content, and seeing where the device is. On Android they arrive in layers: Google's own Family Link, the controls tied to the Google account and the Play Store, your phone maker's additions, and the home network. The work is to set the layers that matter, and to know — honestly — where each one stops.

It helps to start with one fact that shapes everything else: Android is more open than an iPhone. That openness is genuinely useful — it is why you can filter at so many levels — but it cuts both ways. The same flexibility that lets you stack controls also gives a determined teenager more doors: a sideloaded app, a second user profile, a hidden folder. This guide covers those gaps plainly, because a control you over-trust is worse than one you understand.

None of this is surveillance, and it works best when it is not treated as such. Think of these controls as scaffolding — visible, agreed, and gradually removed as your teen earns the room. A teenager who helped set the limits tends to keep them; one who finds them by accident goes looking for the way around. That principle, which the wider parental-controls guide sets out in full, runs through every step below.

At a glance: Android's free controls cover app approval, screen-time and bedtime limits, content filtering on Search, Chrome and the Play Store, device location, and home-network filtering. They cannot read messages, change what a feed serves, reach a device you don't own, or see inside a separately-locked hidden space. The rest is conversation.

Start with Google Family Link

To put real parental controls on an Android phone, start with Google Family Link — Google's free supervision app, and the foundation everything else sits on. From your own phone it links your teen's Google account to yours, so you can approve or block the apps they install, set a daily screen-time limit and a bedtime, filter Search and the web, and see where their device is. It is the one tool that governs the whole device rather than a single app.

Setup takes about fifteen minutes, and is best done sitting beside your teenager rather than behind them. You install Family Link on your phone, and supervision is switched on from your teen's own device with them present and agreeing — there is no way to attach it remotely to a teenager's existing account. Family Link supervises Android phones and tablets (Android 7.0 and up works best) and Chromebooks; it cannot supervise an iPhone or an iPad you hand them. Our full Family Link setup guide walks through every screen — the short version is the callout below.

One point clears up a common myth. Family Link does not switch off when your teen turns 13. Turning 13 (in the US; higher in some countries) lets a teen manage their own Google account, but under Google's current rules a child under 18 needs a parent's approval to stop supervision — you can end it at any time, and you are both notified when it stops. What should change at 13 is not the switch but the spirit: from control toward agreement.

Children need parent approval to stop supervision until they turn 18.

— Google Family Link Help

Family Link is a strong first layer, not a complete one. It never shows the content of texts, DMs or in-app chats; it filters Chrome but not every browser; and it stops at the edge of the device it is on. Those gaps are real, and the rest of this guide is about the layers that cover them — and the ones that nothing covers.

The Google account layer: Play Store, Search and Chrome

Beyond Family Link, three account-level settings do the quiet filtering work: the Play Store's content restrictions, a locked SafeSearch, and Chrome's web filter. Set these once and they hold across the Google services a teenager uses most — and the first of them lives somewhere parents rarely look.

The Play Store's own controls

Inside the Play Store app itself — Profile > Settings > Family > Content restrictions — you can restrict apps, games, films and books by maturity rating, locked behind a PIN your teen does not know. This is a separate, per-device layer: it applies to that one device, so you set it on each device separately. For a teen you already supervise with Family Link, the Play Store's app and content ratings are managed inside Family Link itself, which makes this PIN most useful on a shared tablet or a device Family Link doesn't cover — and on newer setups it now shares the same PIN as Android's device-level parental controls.

SafeSearch and Chrome filtering

For a supervised account, SafeSearch is on and locked by default, filtering explicit results out of Google Search — and it stays locked as long as supervision is on, whatever your teen's age. Family Link's web filtering, set to “try to block explicit sites,” is built around Chrome. Google is honest that no filter is perfect, and there is a specific hole worth closing: a different browser your teen installs is not covered by the Chrome filter, so if you are relying on web filtering, block or remove the other browsers too.

Digital Wellbeing is theirs, not yours

One built-in tool is deliberately not yours to lock. Android's Digital Wellbeing dashboard — screen-time charts, app timers, Focus mode, a bedtime mode — is a self-management tool the person holding the phone sets for themselves. It is worth showing a teenager, because learning to set their own limits is the goal, but it is not a parental control: your teen can change or remove it freely. The enforced limits come from Family Link; Digital Wellbeing is the version your teen runs on themselves.

App-level controls: YouTube and the social apps

Inside the apps your teen actually lives in, control shifts from the device to the account — and the coverage gets thinner. Family Link can block or time-limit an app, but it cannot change what happens inside it once your teen is there. Two cases are worth setting deliberately.

YouTube

YouTube is where the limits are bluntest. For a child under 13 you can pick a content level or use YouTube Kids, but those tiers end at 13; a 13-to-17-year-old gets no fine-grained content levels. Two real protections do remain. YouTube automatically blocks age-restricted (18+) videos for anyone signed in under 18 — the platform's own gate, not a dial you set — and Restricted Mode filters most mature content, which a parent can lock through Family Link so a teen can't switch it off, though only if the account has been supervised since before they turned 13. Beyond that, YouTube's own teen supervision mainly gives insight and wellbeing tools — a view of channel activity, plus “take a break” and bedtime reminders — and a teen can leave that YouTube supervision at any time (unlike Family Link, which they cannot end before 18). For the deeper problem of what the feed serves, see the pillar on harmful content and the algorithm.

Social and messaging apps

Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Discord each offer their own family or supervision tools, and they share one trait: the teen has to link in. A parent sends an invite or sets up pairing, and the teen accepts — there is no way to impose them silently. They typically expose time spent, who can contact the teen, and some content settings, but never the content of messages. Because they depend on cooperation, they are an argument for the transparent approach, not against it: set them with your teen, or they will simply not hold. And because none of them surfaces a private chat, bullying and contact from strangers stay a matter for conversation, not controls. If a stranger's contact ever shades into grooming or a request for images, that is the moment to use the platform's reporting tools and, in the US, the NCMEC CyberTipline — not a settings screen.

Samsung and the manufacturer skins

Because Android is made by many companies, your phone's manufacturer adds its own layer on top of Google's — and you need to know which controls are theirs. The most common surprise is that the brand's parental features are usually aimed at young children, while teen supervision is still Google's job.

Samsung Galaxy

On a Samsung Galaxy, teen supervision runs through Google Family Link, reached from Settings > Digital Wellbeing and parental controls. Samsung's own child feature, Samsung Kids, is a separate, PIN-locked sandbox for young children — a cartoon launcher with kid-safe apps — not a teen tool. Samsung also ships its own Digital Wellbeing and a Modes and Routines bedtime mode, but like Google's, those are self-management tools your teen controls, not parental locks.

Other skins differ in the details

Other makers vary. Xiaomi, for instance, layers its own app-hiding and “Second Space” features over Android, and other skins rename or relocate the same settings. The practical lesson is to spend ten minutes in your specific phone's settings rather than assuming a generic Android walkthrough covers it — the menu names, and sometimes the features themselves, belong to the manufacturer, not to Google. It is also why the hidden-space gap in the next section is worth understanding on whatever phone you have.

Where Android controls leak: sideloading, profiles and hidden spaces

Every Android control has an edge, and because Android is more open than an iPhone, it has more of them. Naming the gaps is not a counsel of despair — it is what stops you from trusting a setting that was never going to hold. Four are worth knowing plainly.

Sideloaded apps and a second profile

By default, Family Link blocks installing apps from outside the Play Store — the “install unknown apps” permission stays off unless you allow it — so casual sideloading is closed off. The bigger Android-specific hole is user profiles: a supervised phone can have a second user profile or a guest session added, and your Family Link settings do not apply there. Google's own advice is to lock other profiles with a PIN, or to use Family Link's control to stop new users being added. It is a five-minute job that closes a wide door.

Hidden spaces — Secure Folder and its lookalikes

The gap that surprises parents most is the hidden container. On Samsung phones, Secure Folder creates a second, separately-locked space that can hold its own copy of an app and its own hidden photos — invisible to the main profile and to Family Link, and able to be hidden from the app list entirely. Some other makers ship a version of the same idea, such as a OnePlus private safe or Xiaomi's hidden-apps and Second Space. (Stock Android's own equivalent, Private Space, is one gap Google has closed — it can't be created while a supervised account is signed in — but the manufacturer versions remain.) None of these is sinister by default; they exist for genuine privacy. But they are places a teenager can keep an app or content out of view, and you cannot see inside them remotely. The honest answer here is a conversation, and an agreement that the phone is set up together.

When the gaps add up

Filtering can also be routed around. A VPN app tunnels past network and DNS filters, and a few browsers carry one built in; on Android, your main lever is Family Link's app-install approval, which stops a VPN being added from the Play Store in the first place. Where these gaps genuinely add up — a mixed household of devices, an older teen, a worry you can actually name — some parents add a dedicated parental-control app for age-appropriate oversight across the devices they own. Used in the open, as a layer rather than a secret, it can close visibility the built-in tools leave — but it is a last layer, not a first one, and it does not replace the conversation.

Cover the home network too

To cover the screens that no per-device app reaches — the smart TV, the games console, a guest tablet — set a filter at the home network. The simplest version costs nothing: point your home Wi-Fi, or a single phone, at a family-filtering DNS service that blocks adult and malicious sites before they ever load.

Free options include Cloudflare for Families (point your router at 1.1.1.3 and 1.0.0.3 to block malware and adult content), OpenDNS FamilyShield (208.67.222.123 and 208.67.220.123), and CleanBrowsing. Set it on the router and it covers every device on the home network at once. On a single Android phone the setting is different: Private DNS wants a hostname, not those router IPs — open Settings > Network & internet > Private DNS and enter, for example, family.cloudflare-dns.com for Cloudflare's malware-and-adult filter — and unlike a router rule, it keeps working even on mobile data.

Two honest limits. A router rule stops at the front door — the moment a phone switches to mobile data or joins a friend's Wi-Fi, it is gone — which is why the on-device layers above still matter. And the phone's Private DNS field can be switched back by a teenager who finds it, since Family Link does not lock it. Network filtering is excellent for the shared screens at home and for raising the floor; it is not a wall, and it is easiest to keep honest when your teen knows it is there and why.

Match the controls to the age — and set them together

The single most important setting isn't a setting at all: match the controls to your teenager's age, and put them in place together. A configuration that fits a thirteen-year-old will feel like an insult to a seventeen-year-old, and a teen who feels the controls never noticed them growing up will, reasonably, stop respecting them.

The shape of it is a gradual handover. For a younger teen, lean on app approval, content filters, and a firm device bedtime. Through the mid-teens, relax the hard blocks and keep the few that guard real harm or runaway cost. By the later teens, most controls should be retired or handed over as tools your teen chooses to keep. The pillar guide sets out that age-by-age plan in detail, and groups like Common Sense Media publish age-appropriate guidance worth reading alongside it; the Android specifics above slot into that frame.

Have the conversation before you change a setting, and keep it short and free of accusation: here is what I'm turning on, here's why, and here's what would let us relax it. That framing names the controls as temporary, ties loosening them to your teen's own conduct, and invites the disagreement you want out loud rather than hidden. Expect some pushback and treat it as a good sign — a teenager arguing about a boundary is engaging with it, not routing around it.

And plan, from the first day, to take the scaffolding down. The aim of every control in this guide is not a permanently monitored teenager but a young adult who has practised good judgment while the cost of a mistake was still small. Set thoughtfully, reviewed together, and loosened on a schedule that tracks the trust your teen earns, Android's controls do their real job — which is to make themselves, eventually, unnecessary.

Frequently asked questions