Install the app and pair it, sitting next to your child

Create your account in a browser

Open the sign-up page on whatever you have to hand, a laptop at the kitchen table or your own phone. It asks for an email address and a password and nothing else. There is no card field and no phone-number field, because nothing is billed and nothing is texted. The one thing you must tick is a short sentence agreeing that you will only monitor a child you are responsible for and that the child will know. The panel opens the moment you press the button; the confirmation email that arrives in the background only matters later, for password resets.

While you are in there, turn on two-factor authentication under Security if you have an authenticator app. It takes a minute now and is a nuisance to come back for. If a second parent will use the panel, add them under Account as well; they get their own login and every action they take is recorded under their name, so neither of you ends up answering the same request twice.

Add your child

A new account is deliberately empty: no children, no devices, no rules. Press Add a child and type a first name. The year of birth is optional, but it lets the routines suggest a bedtime that suits a nine-year-old rather than a fifteen-year-old, and it sets the tone of the default website filter. Nothing here is visible to the child yet, because nothing is on their phone yet.

If you have more than one child, add them all now or add them later; it makes no difference, and each child gets their own rules, their own Places and their own line in the Sunday report. One point that saves confusion: rules belong to the child, not to the device. When Ethan's tablet and the old handset he uses for music are both paired to "Ethan", a bedtime set once applies to both. You can narrow a rule to a single device afterwards if you need to, but the default is the one most families want.

When you press Save, the panel takes you to the Devices page for that child, which is where the next step begins.

Install the app on the child's phone

Now pick up the child's phone, with the child. For the Google Play build, open the Play Store, search for the app by name, and install it the way you would install anything else; it updates itself from then on. For the direct-download build, open the browser on the phone and go to the direct link from your Devices page, which downloads an APK file. Android will stop and say the browser is not allowed to install unknown apps. That is normal and expected; tap Settings on that prompt, switch on Allow from this source, and go back to the download notification to finish. The build section below has the exact path for the common phone brands.

Either way, the icon that lands on the home screen is the app's own, with its own name. It is not disguised as a calculator or a system service, and it will not vanish from the app list. The first time your child opens it, the screen explains in a few lines what it is for, and asks for the code.

Pair with the six-digit code

Back on your browser, the Devices page for the child shows a six-digit code in large type and a countdown. The code is good for fifteen minutes; after that the page quietly makes a new one, so an expired code is never a problem, only a reason to glance back at the screen. Type the six digits into the app on the phone. Within a few seconds the phone says which family it has joined, and your Devices page changes from the code to a device line with the phone's name, Android version and battery.

The code is the only credential the phone ever holds. It does not know your password and cannot sign in to your panel. If a child ever factory-resets the phone, they would need a fresh code from your Devices page to pair it again, which is exactly how it should be. If the phone shows "code not recognised", the usual reasons are a typo, a code copied from the wrong child's Devices page, or a phone with no connection at that moment; all three are covered under when pairing does not take.

Grant the permissions, one screen at a time

After pairing, the app walks through the Android permissions it needs, with a plain sentence beside each one saying what it unlocks. It asks for them one at a time, in order, and most take you into the phone's own Settings and back. Location wants Allow all the time, not While using, or the map goes stale as soon as the screen turns off. Usage access is what counts screen time. Notification access is what lets keyword alerts read the notification lines the phone already shows. Display over other apps is what draws the wind-down warning and the blocked page. Device admin is what makes Lock now possible.

Skip any you do not want; the app does not nag and does not switch anything on by itself. It simply lists what is not granted, and the panel shows the same list under Device health, so you know which features will stay dark. On a first evening, granting location, usage access and display over other apps is enough for the rules most families start with. The rest can wait for a second conversation.

Agree the first rule, together, and stop there

A paired phone with no rule is a phone that reports nothing and blocks nothing. The last step is choosing one rule with your child, in the panel, while they watch. For a younger child it is usually a bedtime; for a teenager it is more often a weekday screen-time budget with a bigger allowance at weekends. Set it, and the child's Today screen on the phone updates straight away: tonight's bedtime, or minutes left, in their own app, so they are looking at the same number you are.

Then close the laptop. The temptation on the first evening is to switch on everything you have read about. Resist it. A phone that acquires ten rules in one night feels like a punishment and generates a week of arguments; a phone that acquires one agreed rule and keeps it feels fair. The first-week plan below adds the others at a pace that lets each one settle. Nothing else is counted or filtered until you decide it should be.