In the past year, it has worked much more reliably than in previous years, though it still occasionally blocks access when it shouldn’t. If you want to allow or block a specific website, you can, and Qustodio will also block unsupported browsers to stop kids getting around the restrictions by installing or using a Brave, Opera or something other than Chrome (it also supports Firefox, Safari, Amazon’s Silk browser and Microsoft Edge).ĭespite its quirks and missing features, Qustodio is still the best parental control software we’ve used. No filtering system is perfect, but Qustodio’s works well. Fortunately, that’s all you may need to do because categories such as alcohol, drugs, violence and pornography are blocked, but allowed for entertainment, news, sports, education, games, religion, technology and others.

You need to go into the settings and enable it. Like many other features in Qustodio, web filtering is disabled by default. Similarly, if a website is blocked, there’s no way for you to quickly review this and allow it if you deem it acceptable. There’s no way for kids to request any extra time within the app, so they’ll have to ask in person or call you. Qustodio has now added an ‘Extra time’ feature on the home screen so it’s easy to grant more time without adjusting the overall time limit. These aren’t exclusive: you can enable or disable any of them. You can choose what happens when the limit is reached: block web browsing internet access, lock the device (or hide the apps on iOS and log out of Windows) and send you an alert. Qustodio would regularly notify my that my daughter had arrived at school hours after she had actually arrived, which isn’t at all useful.Īlerts aren’t always this tardy, but they are never immediate and at best 10-20 minutes after the event.

Unfortunately, these updates are far from real-time.

With Family Locator, you can also track your child’s location on a map and see a timeline of where they’ve been, as well as receiving notifications when they leave or arrive at a specific location (such as school). You can see what your child has been up to on their device – how long they used specific apps and the web and YouTube searches they’ve made – and you’ll get notifications when they install a new app. There are additional features, but they’re not available on all platforms and aren’t always as useful as they sound. Primarily it does two things: prevents your kids from using their device (and specific apps) too much and stops them seeing inappropriate things in a web browser.

Qustodio ios parental control