KidsSafeTech: Screen Time

KidsSafeTech is a parental control app for parents who want to decide, app by app, what their child's phone will and won't open.

You choose which apps are protected. Everything else keeps working normally.


WHAT EACH APP DOES WHEN IT OPENS

Every app gets one of four settings:

• Open — not managed at all
• Always ask — your PIN, every single time
• Quick peek — opens with no PIN and locks a few seconds later, long enough to check a message but not to settle in
• Daily budget — free until the day's time runs out, then your PIN

Pick one in three taps, or use the guided walkthrough that asks which app, what it should do, and shows you a plain sentence describing what will happen before anything changes.


DAILY TIME LIMITS

Give an app its own allowance, or set one shared allowance spent across every protected app — "half an hour on the phone, then come and ask me". Used time is shown per app, so you can see where the day actually went.


BLOCKED TIMES

Add as many as your week needs — bedtime, an afternoon nap, homework hour — each with its own start time, end time and days. A time that ends earlier than it starts runs overnight. Blocked times override daily allowances, so "an hour a day, but not between 1pm and 3pm" works exactly as written.


LOCKED WITH YOUR AUTHENTICATOR

Unlocking uses a six-digit code from Google Authenticator on your own phone, so nothing stored on the child's device can reveal it. Add a backup password, fingerprint or tap pattern as a second way in. Protection will not start until two methods exist, so one lost phone never locks you out for good. Repeated wrong attempts pause unlocking for a while.


EMERGENCY CALLS ALWAYS WORK

The phone dialer stays reachable during blocked times, and the lock screen carries an emergency call button. A managed phone is never an unreachable phone.


TAMPER PROTECTION

Optional uninstall protection stops the app being removed without your PIN, and protection starts itself again after a reboot. New apps installed later can be locked automatically.


BACKUP AND RESTORE

Save your whole setup as an encrypted block, protected by a passphrase you choose, and restore it on a replacement phone or a second parent's device.


PERMISSIONS, AND WHY EACH ONE IS NEEDED

• Usage access and Accessibility — used only to tell which app is currently in the foreground, so the lock can be applied to the right one. The app does not read screen contents, text you type, messages or passwords.
• Display over other apps — to show the lock screen on top of a protected app.
• Device admin (optional) — uninstall protection, nothing else.
• Notifications — the ongoing notice showing that protection is running.

None of these can be granted by the app itself. Each one is a switch you turn on in Android Settings, and the setup guide walks you to each screen in turn.


PRIVACY

No account, no sign-up, no ads. Your settings, your parent key and your child's usage figures stay on the device. The app sends crash reports so faults can be found and fixed. It contains no analytics or advertising SDKs, and does not collect browsing history, contacts, messages or location.


KidsSafeTech is a tool for parents: installed, configured and unlocked by an adult, on a child's device.

Recent changes:
Two new buttons under the protection switch, for the evening that is not going the way your rules assumed.

- Lock the phone - for a set time, or until you unlock it
- Give one app bonus time today, without changing the rule you set
- A warning ten, five and one minute before a daily allowance runs out
- An alert if protection ever stops working
- Fixed a fingerprint prompt that sometimes did not appear