Parental controls on iPhone and Android (2026): a step-by-step guide

Another of the recurring topics that friends and acquaintances tend to ask me about is parental control. It happens every September without fail. Pretty much everyone has some need to keep an eye on the content their kids consume on the Internet and how they use phones and tablets, whether they’re the apple-branded kind or the android-branded kind. Of course, it’s possible to manage this from both platforms, so I’m going to tell you how I handle parental controls on iOS and Android, both on my eldest son’s iPad and on my younger kids’ Samsung Galaxy Tab A tablets, managing everything from my phone and my wife’s.

Quick answer: which combinations work

If the child uses Android, you can manage it with Google Family Link from Android, iPhone, or iPad alike. If the child uses an iPhone, native remote management is done through Family Sharing and Screen Time from another iPhone, iPad, or Mac; Apple doesn’t offer an equivalent app for Android. If you use Android and your child has an iPhone, you’ll need an Apple device to act as organizer, or a third-party solution.

In iOS 27, Apple has revamped schedules, communication restrictions, and other Screen Time controls. To use the new features, it’s a good idea to update all the devices in the family group; if one of them can’t be updated, the previous controls are still available.

I don’t know if you remember, or if back then you didn’t even know about this wonderful blog yet, but we already covered this topic a couple of years ago. Back then we already talked about how important education is given the impossibility of reviewing absolutely everything that passes through our kids’ screens. Nowadays there are some technological solutions that help us with this task, so I’m going to tell you what my needs were and how I’ve gone about solving them, rather than just listing the merits and possibilities of this kind of tool.

So then, my needs were very clear: I needed my kids not to stay up playing on the tablet until all hours of the morning, and I needed them to get up early with the intention of carrying on playing. I also needed to control which apps got installed on the tablets, not so much because of the associated costs (although that too) but because they might be more or less appropriate for them, or because it could be some kind of malicious app infecting their devices in one way or another. On top of that, I wanted to manage all of this comfortably from my phone, without having to go into any website or check control panels or anything complicated that would make me waste so much time that I’d lose interest in checking it.

Obviously, the type of videos they watched online, the possibility of strangers contacting them, or how «hooked» they were also worried me, but we already talked about this in the post I mentioned earlier, and you already know my stance on it: educate before you forbid… if only common sense worked in every area of life, we’d save ourselves a ton of laws!

Parental control on iOS

On Apple’s iOS devices we have several parental control options built right into the system, so I didn’t have to install any third-party app. The first thing to do is tell Apple that we’re creating an account for our child or, if they already have one, indicate that they’re a minor. Under no circumstances should you set up your children with your own iCloud account, since that will give you a lot of headaches: costs, the inability to limit actions, synced photos, etc. Apple has the Family Sharing feature, where we can specify the members of our immediate family and each one’s role, along with their age.

Family Sharing lets us share certain things like iCloud storage, which matters quite a bit. A lot of you will have purchased extra iCloud storage to be able to back up your phone, right? Well, this storage can be shared with members of Family Sharing, so with a single subscription we’ll have every iOS device in the house covered. I, for example, have the 200GB plan, and it’s more than enough for the backups of my phone, my wife’s, and my eldest son’s iPad, all in separate iCloud sub-spaces with no possibility of one accessing another member’s documents, photos, or backups.

We’ll also have some interesting options, such as placing all Family Sharing members on a map (to see, for instance, where our child is… or at least where their device is), sharing a Calendar with important family events, a to-do list that everyone can edit, and so on. I don’t use most of these features much, but they’re there; I have friends who make heavy use of the Calendar and the to-do list with their wife to keep the household, after-school activities, dinners with friends, etc. organized. What I do use is the shared Map to find a misplaced device, or so my wife knows where I am if I’m traveling or running between airports or something like that. Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking… it’s all about having nothing to hide, there’s no chance it’ll show I’m at the «Moments Club.»

Besides, Apple is putting more and more weight behind this Family Sharing group, and you can, for example, share purchases (you only pay once per app, but it can be installed on every member’s device), books or movies, which automatically become available to every family member, your Apple Music subscription, your subscription to Arcade, Apple’s new gaming platform, and so on. If anyone needs more information or wants to check out all the possibilities before signing up, you can find more info on Family Sharing on Apple’s official website at https://www.apple.com/es/family-sharing/.

Needs and solutions

Since there are a ton of options, I recommend you think about it the same way we did in the post about HomeKit automations, that is, in terms of needs you currently have and want to solve. If you start studying every single possibility to see what comes to mind, you’ll go a bit crazy with all the available information and options, which will just wear you out and mean you won’t configure it correctly… so I’d recommend starting with your needs and, once those are covered, reading up on the rest of the possibilities.

NEED: keep track of installed apps to avoid violent or inappropriate games and virus/malware infections.

SOLUTION: Once you’ve created your Family Sharing group, you need to create your child’s account and mark them as a minor. It’s as simple as that—from then on, you’ll get asked to approve every app they want to install, both free and paid ones, so you can review them before accepting. Remember that paid apps only need to be paid for once, so if there are 3 or 4 members in the group, the cost will be charged to the group admin’s card, but everyone will get to enjoy the app. This came in very handy for us with Minecraft, which I don’t know if you’re aware costs €7, so we only had to pay for it once and now have it installed on several devices.

NEED: set a maximum device usage time and prevent it from working before a certain hour, to stop them staying up late or waking up too early.

SOLUTION: Adjust the device’s Screen Time so it locks and unlocks according to set hours. In our case, weekday schedules are very strict and my kids go to bed at a reasonable time (around 9:00 pm) and get up at 8:15 am. On weekends, though, things are much more flexible—some nights we’re all out, some nights they’re watching a movie until late, other nights they go to their grandparents’ place and take the tablet with them… etc.—so on weekends bedtime isn’t set since they don’t need to get up early the next day… but wake-up time is: nobody is allowed to get up and make noise before 9:30 am. To manage all this, we have a Screen Time setup along these lines:

As you can see below, it’s also possible to create restrictions by category, like «games are only available for 2 hours a day but productivity apps for 4 hours.» I don’t use this category-based filtering myself; I prefer to set a rest period and let them decide what to do with the device during that time… although maybe it’d be a good idea to set it up for myself too, to limit a bit how much time I spend playing Dragon Ball Legends, which I’m completely hooked on!

When Screen Time is about to run out, the child gets a notification and can request more time for a particular app, game, tool, or whatever, and we can allow it for 15 minutes, 1 hour, or until the next day. Also, some tools can be allowed ALWAYS, which is what I do with the Kindle app and Messages, in case he wants to stay up a bit longer reading in bed on a weeknight, or in case he wants to tell me something and I’m not home.

But as you can see, the rest of the limits we leave up to their common sense; I don’t restrict them to, say, only 2 hours of tablet time a day. Personally, I think those kinds of limits don’t really make sense anymore and only make them crave it more or come up with some excuse like needing it for some homework or to ask a classmate about the exam material or something like that. For now this system is working for us; they play with the tablet like it’s just another toy, and after a while they get bored of it and go do something else. That said, you do need kids with at least some common sense… not a ton, but some… and it’s not like mine have all that much, since they take after their dad, but so far it’s working for us xD.

NEED: prevent them from seeing inappropriate content, and I’m not just talking about violence or sexual content or whatever, but anything that could hurt them or cause them distress, whatever it might be.

SOLUTION: Adjust the available content restrictions, though I’ll tell you now they’re not foolproof… but hey, they filter out something at least.

At the device level you can also restrict certain actions, like changing the password (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to factory reset or hard reset my kids’ devices because they forgot the pattern or password they’d set up 10 minutes earlier…) or modifying some system settings:

Parental control on Android

Don’t think these restrictions, so nicely built into the operating system, are Apple’s exclusive property, with other devices needing some other kind of solution. If you have Android tablets or phones at home, you can implement the exact same restrictions using Google Family without needing to install any third-party apps.

The options are basically the same: screen time restrictions, managing installed apps, content restrictions, and protecting some system settings. Of course, we also have the option to geolocate devices, share calendars and to-do lists… And the best part is that you don’t need an Android device to manage all this, since the app that handles all these settings is available for both Android and iOS, and it’s called Family Link.

In our case, we’ve set up a policy very similar to the one I described for iOS above, the same bedtime hours and the same app approval process, but let’s go through it step by step.

Installing the Family Link app and creating the group

If you haven’t set up your Google Family group yet, now’s the time. You can access it through your account settings or directly from the website https://families.google.com/families, where we’ll set ourselves up as the group admin and will be able to invite the rest of the members just by knowing their email address. That said, whoever receives the invitation needs to have their password on hand, since they’ll be asked to enter it for security reasons, so if your child doesn’t know their Google account password (and it’s better if they don’t), you’ll need to carry out this whole process directly from the Family Link app.

When we install Family Link for the first time, it asks whether this device is the adult’s or the child’s, and whether we want to set ourselves up as the group Admin. Keep in mind that we can only belong to one Family group, for obvious reasons, so if another member has already created the group and set themselves up as admin, it’s up to them to grant you access.

Once that’s done, the pairing process with our child’s device begins, and it’s pretty straightforward: the app installed on their device will ask for a code generated by our device, which we need to enter… and that’s it, as simple as that. Then you just need to confirm joining the group by entering your child’s account password, but there’s no intermediate step to go through or anything to specify about them being a minor, unlike with iCloud.

The pairing process wraps up quickly, and from that point on we can manage the device’s settings and restrictions. I do miss the option to copy settings between members, since in my case, with 3 kids on Android devices, I’ve had to go through the same process 3 times… I’d love to have an option that says ‘Copy this configuration to other group members,’ so the schedule and content restrictions get replicated automatically.

This time I won’t walk you through the needs and solutions, since they’re exactly the same—same schedules and same type of content as the iOS ones I mentioned earlier:

Can you control an iPhone from an Android (or vice versa)?

So far we’ve looked at each system on its own, but the question that comes up most often is a different one: I have an Android and my child has an iPhone (or exactly the opposite), can I control their phone from mine? The short answer is that it depends on the combination, because both Apple and Google like to keep to their own backyard. Let’s go through it case by case.

Your phone (parent)	Child’s phone	How is it managed?
iPhone	iPhone	Family Sharing + Screen Time (remote) ✅
Android	Android	Google Family Link (remote) ✅
iPhone	Android	Family Link, parent app for iOS (remote) ✅
Android	iPhone	No Apple remote app: Screen Time directly on the iPhone ⚠️

You with an iPhone and the child with Android

This case is simple, and a lot of people don’t realize it: Family Link also has a parent app for iOS. Download it from the App Store, sign in with your Google account, and you can manage your kid’s Android device from your iPhone in exactly the same way I described above (schedules, per-app limits, location, and content). It works at no cost and without any hassle.

You with Android and the child with an iPhone (the tricky case)

Here’s where we hit Apple’s wall: «Family Sharing» and «Screen Time» don’t have an Android app, so there’s no native, free way to manage that iPhone remotely from your Android. And Family Link doesn’t supervise iPhones either. You’ve got two paths:

• What I’d recommend, at zero cost: set up «Screen Time» directly on the child’s iPhone and protect it with a Screen Time passcode that only you know. The rules (rest hours, app limits, and content restrictions) are stored on the device itself and apply automatically, without needing your phone at all. To adjust them later, you’ll just need to grab their iPhone and enter that passcode.
• If you really need remote management: you’ll have to turn to a cross-platform third-party app (Qustodio, FamiSafe, and the like), almost all of them paid and with fairly deep access to the device. Personally, I’d rather avoid these unless there’s a real need, both for privacy reasons and because they tend to be flakier than the system’s own solutions.

One trick: if you have any iPad, old iPhone, or Mac at home, you can use it as the «organizer» device for Family Sharing and manage the kid’s iPhone remotely from there, even if your everyday phone is an Android.

As you’ve seen, this basic level of parental control can be set up on both iOS and Android without any hassle; in fact, on both systems the process is really straightforward. There’s no denying that it’s becoming more and more common for kids to have their own device and, to some extent, manage it themselves—installing apps, changing system settings (sometimes by accident), or getting infected with viruses or malware. But even though both solutions let us manage devices very easily, take your time to set up the right rules and explain them to your kids, otherwise it’ll turn into a source of problems and unmet needs, both for them and for us. And of course, I’ll keep pushing the point we already made a couple of years ago: education is always better than prohibition.