What is the Circle app? – Set Parental controls & Filters

The Circle Parental Control app helps parents manage mobile devices and keep their kids safe online. It enables you to monitor your family’s connected devices, and the app can be used on video game consoles, tablets or iOS and Android devices too.

Limiting online screen time with parental controls is something more and more families are considering. We took a quick look at Circle to see if it was worth downloading.

What is Circle?

The Circle app is an award-winning parental control application. It’s intended to give you the ability to manage your family’s devices.

With Circle, you can create an account for every member of your family and set limitations accordingly. It works like a VPN and it can control the usage on any device that you have set it up to.

With Circle Parental Control, you can use just the app alone, or you can also use the Circle Home Plus. The Circle Home Plus is a physical device that works at your home’s router level along with the app to help you control your child’s internet activity. 

However, at £109, the Circle Plus is quite expensive. But there is the option to just use the app alone, which still offers quite a lot of features. 

circle-app-setup

For mobile device management, it’s one of the most popular apps out there.

Why do we need apps like Circle?

Modern children have not known life without the internet and they’re using the internet often for many more hours than their parents are. 

With children’s internet usage increasing massively since the COVID-19 pandemic, the risks of children being exposed to dangerous content have also increased. Over half of 12-15-year-olds have experienced some form of negative experience online.

This has led to the increase of parental control apps being used so that parents can monitor their children’s internet usage. One of these apps is Circle

While there are hundreds of great benefits of the internet, there are downsides as well. Parents worry about their children being exposed to illegal, disturbing and explicit websites, as these are pretty easy to access. 

Luckily, apps like Circle make the internet a much safer place for children.

How do you use Circle?

The Circle app itself is very simple to use. You can simply create an account upon downloading the app from the app store.

You’ll then be prompted to choose a payment plan. Then, you’ll create a profile for each family member that you want control over.

circle-app-create-profile

For each family member, you can see personalise their limitations.

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From then, you’ll be able to simply track each family member’s internet usage. 

What features does the Circles app have?

Circle offers all the features you would expect from a parental control app. Circle’s customisation abilities are what makes it stand out. You can choose to allow some social media apps but block certain apps. 

You can control all family member’s accounts and devices extremely easily from your account. 

Filtering Websites & Apps

For each family member, you can set personalised limitations. You can choose one of their pre-made filters. They offer a Kid, Teen and Adult filter which automatically allows or denies access to certain websites or social media apps. 

However, you can change these easily to suit your needs. For example, you don’t need to block all social media accounts at once. You can allow TikTok but block Facebook and Instagram. 

circle-app-choose-filter

Device Management

With Circle, you can also manage devices including setting a bedtime and setting time limits. 

circle-app-features

Online Learning

Circle also makes online learning so much easier. You can choose which apps or websites a device can access at a certain time so that your child can be focused on their learning. 

Parenting Control Tips and Tricks 

The Circle app also offers a lot of advice, tips and tricks. These come up as pop-ups while you’re using the app, or you can access the blog to read up on some advice for parental control.

How much does Circle cost?

Circle offers two payment options for their subscription. You can choose to either pay monthly or yearly. The monthly price is £9.49 per month and you can cancel this plan at any time. 

The yearly cost is £80.99, which works out at a better value of being £6.75 per month.

circle-app-price

They do offer a two-week free trial for that you can test it out before committing to purchase the subscription. 

Conclusion

With children spending so much time on the internet these days, it’s crucial that parents do something to protect them from inappropriate or dangerous websites. 

Circle offers a good range of features to protect your child or children from dangers. It’s also a good way to manage your children’s internet time by setting time limits and bedtimes across their devices. 

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Author

Alex

By day he's an engineer and by night (well, evening or very early morning but night sounds way cooler) Alex runs the Apps UK ship. He has a keen interest in language, fitness & especially social media - he is always on the lookout for the next hot platform.

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