![]() We wondered if this feature was broken at the start of the review, as our search terms didn't appear. Norton allows parents to browse their child's internet searches. Test the app by entering a few of your favorite swear words at Google, and you'll mostly see definitions in online dictionaries and sites like Wikipedia. That ensures its search engine uses its own filters to restrict inappropriate content and cuts the chance that your child will find any dubious sites in the first place. Norton Family's second layer of web protection enforces Safe Search (or its equivalent) at Google, Bing, YouTube, Yahoo, and Ask. ![]() If you'd prefer a more relaxed approach to web filtering, you can change Norton's supervision level from Blocked to Warn (your child gets a warning, but can then view the site), or even Monitor (no blocks, no warnings, but you can review browsing history later to check what's going on.) Search history and control 'Restricted' and 'Allowed' lists enable defining sites that will always be blocked, or always be allowed, whatever their category. Set a device to school time and it can only access educational web categories (Image credit: Norton) This won't matter much once you're set up, though, and overall, the screen time features work very well. ![]() Many apps display these side by side, making it easier to compare schedules across the week. There's a small interface hassle in that you must click an icon for a day of the week to see its current schedule. To encourage a screen-free mealtime, for instance, you might opt to disable devices from 5-6pm, but restore than afterward. If that's not right for your family, you can change the schedule and usage limits as appropriate for each day. Our test 9-year-old had his device automatically blocked at bedtime, for instance (7pm-6am weekdays, 8pm-6am weekends), with daily device use limited to two hours Monday-Friday, five hours at the weekend. Norton Family applies sensible default settings depending on your child's age. Most parental control apps don't do this, a potential problem if you get distracted, leave the dashboard open, and your child passes by and can access and tweak their own protection levels. There's a neat plus in a dashboard timeout, where your session automatically closes if you're inactive for too long. The Parent Dashboard protects your security with a session timeout (Image credit: Norton) Here, you can see all the required permissions on the same screen, choose them in whatever order you like, and see a reassuring green tick next to everything you've set correctly - it feels much less intimidating, and we had our device set up in a couple of minutes. The typical Android parental control setup might tell you it needs to set location permission, then display the relevant Android setting, then move to Accessibility, then display that setting - you must follow the preset order, and you've no idea what's coming next or how many steps are left. This helps the setup feel more organized, too. Many parental control apps jump into the setup process without properly explaining what they're doing, so it's good to see Norton lay everything out on a single page, with a brief explanation of why each permission is necessary. The app then explained it needed several permissions to take proper control of the device: device admin, app usage, location, display over other apps, accessibility, and phone. Parents can set a custom profile for each of their children during the setup process (Image credit: Norton)
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