MMGuardian parental-control app review

Our Finding of fact

MMGuardian has tons of features, simply it's undermined by a terrible interface.

For

Extensive feature localise on Android
Granular controls
Pot read texts connected both iOS and Android

Against

Gets expensive with multiple devices
Terrible user interface
Small have assail iOS

Tom's Guide Finding of fact

MMGuardian has tons of features, but it's undermined by a terrible exploiter interface.

Pros

+ Extensive feature attack Android
+ Granular controls
+ Give the axe read texts on both iOS and Android

Cons

- Gets expensive with multiple devices
- Terrible user interface
- Small feature assail iOS

The company can MMGuardian was founded in 2012, following the somewhat common level of founders who were experiencing issues with controlling their own kids' device usage.

That seems to have led to a kitchen-sink approach: MMGuardian has virtually every feature you fundament think of, but the user interfaces on both Mechanical man and iOS are outdated and much discouraging to consumption. It's not on the nose unitary of the best parental control apps.

Flat if you're an Android user who wants a rich feature set, you may cost compliant to look past MMGuardian's shortcomings for the deep level of control and wealth of information offered. And Eastern Samoa some Malus pumila and Google break off away at apps' abilities to log and block calls and textbook messages, non to mention read text messages, MMGuardian has found workarounds to continue offering such features happening both platforms.

But for both cost and user experience, you'd be better served connected both mobile platforms by Take-home Nanny or Kaspersky Safe Kids.

MMGuardian: Costs and what's covered

The pricing for MMGuardian can be a little confusing, Eastern Samoa it has variable rates depending on the device you are superficial to protect. Its erst inexpensive iOS rates have been brought into line with its Android-sound rates.

	Mechanical man Phone	Android Tablet	iPhone/iPad
Single Device	$3.99 Monthly	$1.99 Unit of time	$3.99 Monthly
	$34.99 Yearly	$14.99 Annually	$34.99 Yearly
	$79.99 5 Years	N/A	N/A
Family unit Be after	$7.99 Monthly	$3.98 Monthly	$7.99 Monthly
	$69.99 Yearly	$29.98 Yearly	$69.99 Yearly
	$149.99 5 Years	N/A	N/A

Android tablets are cheaper to monitor because they deficiency the location tracking, call and SMS blocking, and text-message-monitoring features found along the Android phone app.

iOS lacks many features the Android phone app has, including comprehensive reports, time limits, call and SMS block, surgery alerts, although it today offers monitoring of both SMS and instant messages via a Mac or Windows desktop app linked to the child's phone.

Family Android phone plans breed capable Little Phoeb devices of any typecast, whereas the family Humanoid Tablet plans are logically restricted to the tablet apps. There is no definite option for an iOS-only family program.

If you have adequate to three iOS devices, you are finer served by the single-device plans. But if you have quatern Beaver State cinque iOS devices, you should, oddly enough, choose for the Humanoid call family plan, which covers five devices on either mobile OS.

You can try out whatsoever of the MMGuardian plans free for 14 years; here is where to sign.

MMGuardian: User ratings

The Android app is definitely the better of the deuce, and it enjoys a 4.1 verboten of 5 rating with more than 1 million downloads in the Play Store. It's easy to pick up how users would be drawn in by the features — MMGuardian doesn't skimp there, with almost every wishlist box chequered happening the Android version.

Things aren't rather as rosy on the iOS root, with fitting a 1.4 out of 5 on 384 ratings in the App Store. MMGuardian just doesn't sustain against much of the competition on iOS.

The iOS community also tends to be more punishing for poor design, and MMGuardian falls down solid at that place. The web portal and both mobile apps share a abysmally outdated design esthetical, with inexplicably varying interactions even within the Lapp page.

Oddly, the Android tablet doesn't get on a new feature that was added to the iOS and Android smartphone apps subsequently our review was in the beginning published. A new artificial-word ingredient looks for nudity in images saved to a device, and alerts parents if it finds any.

MMGuardian: Installation

We tested MMGuardian on a Google Pixel 2XL running Android 9.0 (Pie), an iPhone 7 Nonnegative and an iPad Air 2. The web portal was dependable on a 15-inch, 2017 Macbook In favour of running MacOS 10.13.6.

I really recommend setting functioning MMGuardian via the app itself, as the web portal is more likely to confuse you.

Your first step should be to download the "MMGuardian Parental Control App for Kids Phone" from either Google Play or the iOS App Salt away. Thither is a distinct app for the parent's phone that you leave download later, but you can complete the entire installation and setup from the child's phone.

On both mechanized platforms, the app wish guide you through the necessary steps to approve the various permissions needed. This is slightly more involved along iOS as a management profile needs to be installed via Hunting expedition, but neither installation takes more than few minutes.

Oddly, the app never asks for your kid's gens or age during the apparatus process. This is the only app we tested in which that was the causa.

To sum that information, you need to select a child device in the parent app after the device is down up, prize "Phone Settings" operating room "Tab Settings," then name the device. Ideally, you would call the gimmick something like "John the Evangelist's Android Phone" or "John's Tablet," but you can hollo it anything you want — you wear't need to input a child's actual name anywhere.

Likewise, you never enter the small fry's birthdate or exact age, which is odd for a parental-control app. Instead, you pick an old age stray for the web browser settings. As you might feature gleaned by now, MMGuardian doesn't use child profiles — it just has incompatible settings for every device.

MMGuardian: App management

App direction varies greatly between Android and iOS, with the iOS app able merely to completely block whol downloaded apps at once. (Inbred iOS apps stay on active.) The Android app lets you block whatever singular apps.

Happening iOS, this feature basically amounts to meter management, A in that respect is nary other time-restriction functionality. What the iOS MMGuardian app terms American Samoa" app control" simply lets you agenda when downloaded apps will be blocked.

Other features grouped within app ascendency are disabling the iOS App Store and setting restrictions for iTunes and App Store capacity, but these are actually just native iOS features that are organism used by the MMGuardian app.

The Android app, along the other hand, lets you set out as granular as you like. Your child's entire app leaning is displayed with everything at the start do to "Allow." Solicit the leafy vegetable suss out mark next to any individual app to block it, which wish flip the green tick to a red R-2 with a line through it. Other options are to grant all apps, block all apps, and immediately stoppage whatsoever newly downloaded apps.

As with the Kaspersky and Qustodio paternal-restraint apps, there's crossover with fourth dimension management here also. If you solicit the "Groups" tab at the top of the screen, then tap the green action button at the bottom right of the screen, you can create groups of apps with specific time limits and schedules.

You can create arsenic many of these groups as you like. If you want to just limit games OR social apps for a specific sentence frame, e.g., you can make up a specialised group for that. Or you can make a global setting by tapping "superior whol" to include every apps in the group.

You can fixed separate weekday and weekend time limits for these groups, ranging from 30 transactions to 4 hours. You can also schedule when these apps are to be blocked, and you backside minimal brain dysfunction multiple schedules to apiece group if requisite.

MMGuardian: Web filtering

On both Mechanical man and iOS, MMGuardian blocks the endemic web browser and replaces it with its possess. IT also has filtering for the Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera browsers on Android. But you will stillness have to block OR delete any secondary browsers your child might sustain installed on iOS.

This is the stone's throw where you finally select an age for your child. There are five age ranges to opt from, and selecting whatsoever leave set the default category block and settings.

MMGuardian is the champion of web-filtering categories, with approximately 150 in total. This feels like rank overkill; the next-closest app in abundance of filter categories is Norton Family Premier, with 48.

MMGuardian's filtering worked perfectly in our examination; your mileage will be contingent on how well you've blocked operating theatre deleted any alternative browsers.

Additionally, there are deuce check into boxes to allow downloads from the web and to prevent your location from organism shared on the web.

The final piece for web filtering is the "Web Filter URL Override," which lets you block (or allow) a specific Uniform resource locator that it isn't being properly handled by one of the class filters. You tin can also view the previous day's web history to see if there's anything popping up that shouldn't be there, or if a site that is actually fine is being blocked.

MMGuardian: Time direction

The time-management feature is for Android only, and lets you schedule when the headphone is locked completely. Past default, the app creates discrete "nighttime" schedules for weekdays and weekends that you can toggle on or inactive or tweak as necessary.

Upright remember that this feature completely locks the device, going unconstricted only the ability to contact the parent.

MMGuardian: Texting management

SMS management was an Humanoid-exclusively characteristic when we first wrote this review. Arsenic with web filtering, monitoring SMS messages on Humanoid relies on replacing the native or third gear-party messaging app your child is using with the MMGuardian messaging app. Once this is through and else apps are deleted, the features available are reasonably extensive.

Call Block Mode lets you barricade non only calls but also SMS messages from specific contacts or phone numbers game. Past text messages can't actually be blocked, but you can choose to be notified if a text is dispatched to a blocked contact.

MMGuardian also offers a daily report with the text of all SMS messages sent and accepted, which worked perfectly in my testing.

MORE: The One Google App Every Parent Needs

Finally, there is a Text Supervise Way that lets you specify words that you would equal flagged if they appear in your child's texts. They bequeath show in the reports, and you can opt to undergo an SMS when a match is found.

In 2020, MMGuardian added "Content Reports for iPhone," a feature that delivers SMS and instant messages via a program that backs leading the child's iPhone to a nurture's Macintosh or PC American Samoa long Eastern Samoa the two devices are connected the same Wi-Fi network. It's an inelegant solution and we harbour't had a chance to try it out in practice, just information technology should work in theory.

MMGuardian: Positioning tracking

MMGuardian has a evenhandedly robust, if slightly unusual, set of location features, with separate location mapping, location history and location-trailing functions.

The introductory functionality is just the measure map identifying your youngster's electric current location, available on some iOS and Android. But you can go back and look at the child's location history for the last 12 hours, today, yesterday OR the last 7 days. One unusual touch to this represent is that it provides the physical speed that the child (or more accurately, his or her device) in mph.

Track location is the final piece for this section. You set up a metre schedule and then track a child throughout that time, with the selection to be updated on the child's incumbent localization at regular intervals. We didn't find this as convenient as the geofencing in the Kaspersky OR OurPact apps, merely it worked all right and could certainly allow you to ensure a child makes it to or from schoolhouse all right.

Lock/Unlock

For one-off situations in which you pauperism your child to stop using, or to exist able to use, their device in real time, this can lock away or unlock their twist in a azygos click.

Lock Scene

You can take how your fry's Android phone volition behave when locked. You can set up it to send a customized auto-response SMS if your tike receives a text when the phone is locked, you can have the headphone go into Silent Mode and you can force it to end ongoing calls.

MMGuardian review: Bottom line

Given the high subscription price, it is difficult to recommend MMGuardian to most anyone. It does have a solid feature number for Android users, and I can imagine someone inadequate all that data and control, but MMGuardian is so frustrating to carry off that I don't think it is at long las worth it.

You posterior get close to the synoptic range features at a cheaper damage and with a better design from a rival like Norton Sept Chancellor.

Updated with add-on of iOS message monitoring from Windows PCs. This review was originally publicized in February 2019.

A someone-professed "wearer of wearables," Sean Riley is a Older Writer for Laptop computer Mag who has been covering tech for more than a decade. He specializes in covering phones and, of course of action, wear tech, merely has besides written about tablets, VR, laptops, and smart domicile devices, to name merely a couple of. His articles have also appeared in Tom's Guide, TechTarget, Phandroid, and more than.