And we liked the feature that lets a kid send an SOS message to designated phones with a single tap. MMGuardian has nearly every parental-control feature you might want on Android phones, but its abilities are severely limited on iOS and the user interfaces are outdated and frustrating on both platforms. The iOS and Android smartphone apps offer location tracking and excellent web filtering, and MMGuardian recently added an artificial-intelligence component to spot nudity in saved images.
On an Android phone, the parent can use MMGuardian to read every text and block any number. Unfortunately, time management and screen-time scheduling are Android-only, and the separate MMGuardian app for Android tablets has no location tracking. Even by the lowered expectations of what an iOS parental control app can do, MMGuardian doesn't offer a lot for iPhone users. Read our full MMGuardian review. What you need from a parental-control service mainly depends on how old your kids are. If you're the parent of children under 12, you absolutely want to be able to block objectionable websites, but you might also consider an app that's available on Amazon Fire tablets.
If you've got teenagers, you might want to let them have a look at objectionable things online, but only if you're aware of it. You might also want to see whom your teens are talking to in messenger apps, and to see where they are late on a Friday night. And you might want to consider a service that monitors your kids' Windows and Mac devices as well as their smartphones. The best parental control apps will offer, at a minimum, a website filter, location tracking, screen-time limits including a scheduler, and an app blocker that works at least on Android.
Useful extra features include geofencing, which alerts you if a child's phone leaves a designated "safe" area like school or a relative's house.
Get Answers with Cell Phone Monitoring
Some of these apps let you block and log the calls and texts a child makes and receives, but only on Android. A couple even let you read a child's text messages, but none lets you listen in on call, because that's illegal. And most let you monitor your child's phone from a desktop computer web interface as well as your own smartphone.
Evaluation criteria We focus on parental control apps that emphasize proactively setting up filters and limits before your child uses the phone rather than merely tracking activities after the fact.
We take the following criteria into account:. We tested each app on every platform it supported twice, from installation to testing to uninstall. We typically monitored activity from the MacBook Pro, but if apps offered control from a smartphone app, we tested those features as well. Calls and texts for monitoring purposes were made from a secondary Android device. The best Android parental-control apps remain more robust than their iOS counterparts in most cases, especially with regard to call and text monitoring. But new additions to iOS have closed the gap somewhat.
Cell Phone Monitoring Software | Mobile Spy Smartphone Monitoring
We note areas in which there are discrepancies in the functionality offered on each platform, but we are not providing distinct ratings and reviews for the iOS versus the Android version of each app. Tom's Guide. Best GPS trackers for kids: Keep track of the little ones at all times The best and worst antivirus software for parents Best Android apps for kids The best parental control apps for smartphones can help you track your kids, see with whom they're communicating, block them from viewing objectionable or dangerous websites, and even help kids understand limits while preventing them from seeing adult content or chatting with creeps.
What are the best parental control apps? The best parental control app you can get 1.
The best multi-platform support among the best parental control apps. Topics Apps. See all comments MM Guardian seemed like a great app, but my year-old son uninstalled it easily. Unfortunately, it seems most kids will always be more tech-savvy than parents. Good review. I installed logskit android spy app. Have a look at it and include it in this list. Tom's Guide: really annoyed that the great and helpful comment I wrote got erased when I submitted. Contact Details Mobistealth gives you access to all contact details saved on the target iPhone. Picture Uploads all the pictures stored on the target iOS device to your online account so you can easily view them from anywhere.
Text Message Logging It lets you view the content and details like time and date of all inbound and outbound text messages of target iPhone. Monitoring Hike Mobistealth can log Chat sessions at Hike.
What Can FlexiSPY's iPhone Spy Software Do?
Monitoring iMessages Mobistealth allows users to view all details of iMessages. Read More About MobiStealth. No Special Training Necessary to monitor an iPhone Unlike many monitoring software that can be almost impossible to understand or use, Mobistealth doesn't need to be downloaded or installed. Our Easy-to-Use interface allows parents to quickly access the information collected by our cell phone surveillance tools so you can get the answers you need in the shortest time possible. After she came home nearly 3 hours late one night and smelling of alcohol, my husband and I banned her from seeing him.
We thought our daughter was seeing Danny again but couldn't prove it until we used Mobistealth and tracked her down to his parents' house! Denise F. Sommerset, NJ. So you can monitor any iPhone model by using Mobistealth. All you have to do is install the mSpy app on the target phone the phone you are monitoring , then activate it using your license code. Once mSpy is activated, you can log in to the online portal to access information collected from the target phone such as messages texts, WhatsApp and other messaging apps , phone calls, browsing history, and GPS location.
One of my favorite features of mSpy is its no-jailbreak feature, which allows you to spy on an iPhone without jailbreaking it. Their trained technicians will help you every step of the way. Want to spy on an Android phone? There is no need to root the phone to use this app. After installation, you can log into your account and start tracking. SpyBubble works with devices running Android 5.
I tested it on a Samsung Galaxy S9 Android 8. Highster Mobile Spy, as the name suggests, is a mobile spying app that lets you spy on Android phones. It has all of the usual features you might expect from a cell phone spyware, including location tracking, remote locking, and the ability to record phone activities. Other features of the Highster Mobile include:.
As with most Android spy apps, Highster Mobile is easy to install and configure. Once installed and configured, it runs in the background and silently records all user activity, including call recordings, call history, GPS, texts, emails, photos, social media and instant messages Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype, etc. All the data collected can be viewed through a web-based portal or mobile app. There are two versions: Premium and Extreme.
FlexiSPY Premium offers everything you generally need from a phone spy app, but if you want more advanced features, the Extreme version might be what you need. So should you use FlexiSPY? I would only recommend using it on a jailbroken iPhone or rooted Android.
Make sure you NEED all the features before you spend the money. Hoverwatch is a spy app that tracks and records phone calls, texts, instant messages, locations and visited websites. If you are a parent who wishes to monitor the movements and communications of your child, Hoverwatch allows you to do so via a secure Web portal. I tested it on my Android phone and it worked quite well. The Hoverwatch app works on all Android devices running Android 4 and up. It also has desktop versions for Mac and PC. You must have access to the target phone. To install spyware app on an iPhone, the device must be jailbroken.