- Google has just updated its useful family link service for parents
- Now it allows you to reduce distractions on your children’s phone during school hours.
- The family link has also been given a great redesign to facilitate the use of
Google’s family link allows you to remotely manage your children’s devices and is one of the most recognized tools of the technological giant. If he is a father and has not yet used the service, it is now a very good time to turn it around because he only received three great updates.
The first and possibly bigger family update is a characteristic called ‘school time’. Currently, this helps reduce distractions in your child’s smart watch during school hours, and “next week”, Google says he is implementing support for this on Android phones and tablets.
This means that you can silence notifications and schedule the limited functionality of the Android phone during your child’s school hours. However, this does not necessarily have to mean a complete phone or table blackout during those periods: you can establish a ‘break’ in the schedules, for example, if you are happy to sail the website during lunch or break.
You can also choose the specific applications that are silenced or restricted, for example, keeping the specific school available. And even when your child’s phone’s functionality or tablet is restricted, they will still have access to important characteristics such as calling emergency services.
The second new feature of the family link, which will only be available “in the coming months”, is the ability to restrict who they call and send text messages who they call and send text messages from their Android phones. Google says you can add contacts approved from the family link to your child’s phone, which means that they can only interact with those approved contacts. The disadvantage is that this will only work with Google messages and marker applications on Android phones and not with third -party applications.
The final change to Google Family Link is a fairly considerable redesign. A new screen time tab brings together all its administration tools, and Google says that it has also optimized its controls tab to facilitate the blockage of particular websites or approve application downloads.
If you have more than one child, juggling with multiple accounts should also be easier. You can now slide between your profiles and manage all your devices from a single page, with the most advanced tools ordered on a separate screen.
If you are a father on Android, you must try the family link
We are great fans of Google Family Link in Techradar, and these updates definitely sound useful, particularly the arrival of the ‘school time’ on Android telephones and tablets. The tool is mainly directed to children under 13, but can also use it for teenagers (if you are prepared to deal with the inevitable friction).
Speaking about his experiences with the application, Techradar’s global editor, Marc McLaren, said previously: “I would not say that Google Family Link was a better father than me or my partner, but it was a very closed thing for a while. It works brilliantly, it works brilliantly, eliminating part of the raising of children in the digital era. “
“Being able to establish limits for individual applications has been a great help since my daughters have entered their first years of adolescence and they have finally allowed them in Tiktok and Snapchat; without it, I suspect that both would spend approximately 20 hours a day moving Their foods, instead of two hours they are given, “he said.
Family Link also has a practical location function that shows where your children are on a map. All the service, naturally, only works well if both the father and the child are on Android (the function of ‘contacts administered by parents’ requires Android 14), so it is not so good if his family is in a mixture of Android and iOS. But in general, it is worth exploring, and you never know, your children would also like.
