Family Link on your child's Android
Google Family Link gives your child's Android a night lock, app limits, School time, approved contacts and content filters, from a free app on your own phone. That app looks the same whichever Android your child has. Allow 20 to 40 minutes.
Good to know first
- Your child's phone needs Android 7 or later. Your own can be an Android or an iPhone. You need both, your child's for a while in step 1, and your child's Google Account.
- The little you do on your child's phone has different names: Digital Wellbeing on a Pixel, Digital Wellbeing and parental controls on a Samsung. The steps say so where it matters.
- Family Link gives you filters to set. Google says itself that it does not block inappropriate content on its own.
- Family Link supervises an account. What your child does signed out, in another user profile or on a school computer with a school account is outside it.
- Your child cannot ask for more time in the app. On iPhone the child taps a button and you get a request. On Android the child asks out loud, and you give Bonus time from your phone. In-app requests exist only for blocked websites and new apps.
- App limits are set per app, one at a time. No categories, so no limit covers tomorrow's new game on its own.
- Allowed calls and texts cover Google's messaging app and Google's phone app, on Android 14 or later. WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram and Discord are not affected. In Sweden that is where teenagers write, so the contact limits cover less than they seem to.
- 112 always works. A named emergency contact, a grandparent or the other parent, can only be reached if you have added them to the approved contacts.
- In spring 2026 many parents reported that their child could not make any calls at all after contact limits were switched on. Whether it is fixed is not known. Make a real call from your child's phone once step 6 is done.
- School time is still rolling out, and Google publishes no list of countries. Look under Screen time and Schedules: if School time is there, you have it.
- Supervision continues after 13. The account can then be turned into a supervised teen account, and until 18 your approval is needed to end supervision. What changes: YouTube becomes unsupervised, and contacts created through Family Link disappear when the account is updated, unless they are also in Google Contacts.
- If you come from iPhone: much of this resembles the Screen Time guide, and a few things are better here.
Here's how
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1
Get Family Link on your own phone and sign in with your Google Account. Then you need your child's phone for a while.
If your child is under 13, you create the account through Family Link. If your child is 13 or older, they have their own account, and you add supervision to it.
If someone else's Google Account is on your child's phone, it has to go first. It is in Settings, on the row for passwords and accounts, which Google has renamed a couple of times. Remove the account, sign in with your child's, and confirm on the spot that you are the parent. No factory reset is needed.
While you have the phone: if multiple user profiles are switched on, an unlocked extra profile is a phone without limits. Lock it with a password, or turn off user switching.
Back in the app: select your child at the top left. Along the bottom are three tabs, Screen time, Controls and Location. Everything below is in them.
Your child is selected at the top left. The three tabs along the bottom are the whole app.
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2
If you do only one step in this guide, do this one. Screen time, then Schedules, turn on Downtime. Downtime is Google's name for the night lock. Under Weekly schedule you choose days, start time and end time, for example 7 pm to 7 am on school nights. For tonight only, there is Tonight.
Calls always work during Downtime, and the apps with Unlimited time from step 4 keep working. With a charger in the hallway, the phone spends the night outside the bedroom.
On the same tab is Time limits with Daily limit, a total screen time per day. The limit applies per device: two hours for a child with a phone and a tablet is two hours on each.
When the time is up your child cannot unlock the phone or see notifications, but can answer calls and make emergency calls. If your child needs more time one evening, you give Bonus time under the device name on the Screen time tab.
Downtime is the night lock. Calls always work, even when the schedule has switched the screen off.
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3
Screen time, Time limits, App limits. Choose an app, tap Set limit and set hours and minutes. One app at a time, no categories: go through the apps that take the most time and set a limit on each one.
On the same screen you switch an app between Allowed and Blocked. A blocked app disappears from your child's phone. The change takes effect after about five minutes, or the next time the phone is online. System apps cannot have limits, and some apps cannot be blocked, because supervision or the phone needs them.
On iPhone a limit can be set to zero seconds, so the app is closed to the child but opens at once with the parent's passcode. That does not exist here. To open a blocked app you switch it to Allowed, wait those minutes, and block it again. Keep that in mind before you block an app you need yourself on your child's phone. The Screen Time guide describes the iPhone version.
Limits and blocking are on the same screen. A blocked app disappears from your child's phone.
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4
The same screen: Screen time, Time limits, App limits, choose the app and set Unlimited time. This is the list of what should never run out: the school app, SL, the map, perhaps music.
These apps keep working during Downtime and School time, when everything else is off. Keep the list short: every app here is open at half past ten at night. An app that opens web pages from inside takes your child onto the web past the filters in step 7.
One exception: if you lock the phone by hand with Lock on the Screen time tab, the apps with unlimited time go too. An emergency lock takes away the map and the public transport app as well.
What works when everything else is locked. A short list.
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5
Screen time, Schedules, turn on School time. Under Weekly schedule you set days and times, for example 8 am to 3 pm. For a gap in the middle of the day: choose a day, add a Break to School time, for example lunch from 11:30 to 12:15, and tick Apply Monday–Friday. Delete break removes it.
During School time your child's phone gets its own home screen with only the apps you chose under Allowed apps, and notifications go quiet. Your child can call and text, and emergency calls work.
School time is still rolling out, and Google does not say which countries have it. Look for it under Schedules before you plan the school week around it. The part that limits who your child can call during the school day needs Android 14 or later. The schedule itself works from Android 7.
The schedule, a break in the middle of the day, and a short list of allowed apps. Emergency calls work throughout.
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6
The Controls tab, then Contacts, calls & text, then Allowed calls & texts. The choices are Anyone, Contacts I add & limited groups, and Only contacts I add.
Add the family first, and the emergency contacts. 112 always works, grandma only if she is on the list. The most common mistake: contacts are locked to keep strangers out, and keep out the person who most needs to be reachable.
If your child wants to add a new number you get a notification, Your child wants to add a new contact, with Approve and Deny. Your child cannot call or text the number until you have answered.
Two limits: it needs Android 14 or later, and it covers only Google's messaging app and Google's phone app. WhatsApp, Snapchat and Instagram are not affected.
Make a test call from your child's phone before you move on. Parents have reported outgoing calls failing after contact limits were switched on. Better to find out at the kitchen table than on a Friday night.
Emergency contacts have to be on the list themselves. 112 is the only thing that always gets through.
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7
All of it is under the Controls tab. Allow ten minutes.
- Google Play: set the highest maturity level for Apps & games, Movies and TV, and choose whether to restrict explicit content under Books. Google says itself that apps outside the filter can be found through search or a direct link. It is a filter, so some things still get through.
- Purchases & download approvals: choose All content, and you approve every download. You get a notification with Approve and Deny, or approve directly on your child's phone with your own password.
- Google Chrome and Web: Try to block explicit sites for most children, or Only allow approved sites for the youngest, with the sites listed under Manage sites. The filters apply to Chrome. Block other browsers in step 3, otherwise your child goes round them.
- Google Search: SafeSearch filtering is already set to Filter and only you can change it. Nothing to do.
- YouTube: choose Explore, Explore more or Most of YouTube.
Location sharing: switch it off. The Location tab, then Location settings, turn off See your child's location. The limits on the phone help your child put it down. A map of where your child is all day affects the trust between you, and trust is harder to rebuild than a schedule is to set.
The filters are under Controls. Location sharing is under Location, off.
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8
If you have a Samsung and a small child, there is Samsung Kids: a children's home screen with only the tiles you put there. It opens under Settings, Apps, Samsung Kids, Open. On older Samsung models it is a Kids tile in the quick settings panel.
Your child leaves Samsung Kids with the Back button or with More options and Close Samsung Kids. Both ways need the unlock code, the phone's usual screen lock if there is one. The parent settings are under More options, Parental controls.
Samsung Kids is built for the youngest. For a teenager with BankID, a public transport app and the school app, Family Link is the tool, and Samsung's own answer for older children is also Family Link.
Whether BankID, the public transport app and Family Link's time limits work inside Samsung Kids has not been tested. Try it before you decide.
The bonus: a black-and-white screen in the evening. On a Samsung it is under Settings, Modes and Routines, Sleep, Other actions, and is called Grayscale. On a Pixel it is under Digital Wellbeing, Bedtime mode, among the screen options, and is also called Grayscale. Two menus, the same result. A screen without colour pulls less, and everything works as usual.
Greyscale belongs to the phone itself, and takes a minute to turn on.
Questions? Write through the contact form or on Instagram, @stillna.app (opens in a new tab).