Google Family Link: What It Can and Can't Do
A walkthrough of Family Link using Google's own setting names: daily limits, per-app limits, and schedules — plus the four places the built-in controls don't reach.
Most articles about kids and screen time assume an iPhone. That assumption leaves out a large share of families: in a survey of 300 parents of elementary and junior-high students in Japan, conducted in December 2025, 40% of the children used an iPhone and 34% used Android. If your child’s phone is the Android one, the controls live in Google’s Family Link app, and the setting names are different enough that an iPhone guide won’t help you.
What follows is Family Link organized the way you’d actually look for it — by the thing you want to change, using Google’s own labels from the For Families help pages. How to agree on the rules themselves is a separate problem, covered in when your family’s phone rules stop working.
The map
| What you want | The setting | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Cap the total for a day | Daily limit | Screen time |
| Different caps by day of week | Weekly schedule | Screen time |
| Cap one app | App limits | Screen time → Usage controls |
| Pause at night or during class | Schedules (Downtime / School time) | Screen time |
| Stop or restart the device now | Lock / Unlock | Screen time |
| Add a little more, just today | Bonus time | Screen time |
| Require approval for new apps | Google Play | Controls |
Almost everything starts in “Screen time”
Open the Family Link app, pick your child at the top left, then tap “Screen time” at the bottom left. If you get lost in a submenu, back out to here.
Google documents support for Android 7.0 (Nougat) and later, or ChromeOS version 83 and later. On anything older than Android 7, the time limits simply aren’t available — worth checking before you spend an evening hunting for a menu that isn’t there.
The daily cap, and spreading it across the week
Turning on “Daily limit” sets how much total time the device can be used in a day. There’s no reason for weekdays and weekends to match. “Weekly schedule” lets you pick a day and give it its own number, and setting the weekdays short from the start heads off the nightly negotiation about whether today counts as special.
When something legitimately comes up, “Bonus time” adds to that one day without touching the underlying limit. That distinction matters more than it sounds: limits that get edited upward in the moment tend to stay edited.
Per-app limits
When the problem is one app rather than the phone overall:
- Open the Family Link app
- Pick your child at the top left
- Tap “Screen time” → “Usage controls” → “App limits”
- Choose the app
- Tap “Set usage limit”, pick hours and minutes, then “Done”
Google notes that the limit applies to that app across all of your child’s Android and ChromeOS devices. Moving to the tablet doesn’t reset the clock.
The reverse setting matters just as much. For the apps you don’t want interrupted — messaging, calls, maps — turn on “No app limit”. Those become “Always allowed apps”, and they keep working during the schedules described below. Decide what stays before you decide what shrinks. A child who can show you that they can still reach you is far less likely to treat the whole arrangement as something to work around. The same logic applies when adults set this up for themselves, from a different angle, in keeping your messaging app while blocking social media.
Night and school hours: “Schedules”
To pause by time of day rather than by total, go to “Screen time” → “Schedules” and turn on “Downtime” or “School time”. Both have their own “Weekly schedule”, so start and end times can differ per day.
What keeps working during a schedule, per Google’s help:
- Calls can be made at any time
- Anything you marked as an “Always allowed app” still opens
- Sending messages works only if that messaging app is in the always-allowed list
- During School time, incoming calls and messages are silenced — but your child can still call out and send messages
That last pair of lines is usually the answer to the objection you’ll hear first, which is some version of “so I can’t reach you after 9pm?” You can. Showing the setting is more convincing than explaining it.
Four things it can’t do
These are limits Google states outright. Knowing them in advance saves you from debugging a setting that was never going to work.
- System apps can’t have app limits. Apps the device or the parental controls themselves depend on are out of scope entirely.
- Family Link can’t manage iPhones, iPads, or computers other than Chromebooks. In a household with mixed devices, the iPhone side needs Apple’s own tools — see setting up Screen Time through Family Sharing.
- Purchase approval only covers purchases made through Google Play’s billing system. Other payment paths go through untouched.
- Supervision is designed for children under 13, or the equivalent age where you live. Past that, management rests on the young person’s own consent rather than on a setting you control.
The fourth one is the one worth sitting with. There is a window during which a cap is something you can simply apply, and after it, the only thing that carries over is whatever you worked out together about how the time gets decided. Using the window to have that conversation tends to outlast using it to tighten the number.
Today
- Check that the device is on Android 7.0 or later
- Use “Weekly schedule” to give weekdays and weekends separate caps
- Turn on “No app limit” for the apps you don’t want interrupted — do this first
- Set “App limits” on just one or two apps that reliably run long
- Turn on Downtime for the evening, and show your child that calls still go through
Resist entering all of it in one sitting. One cap, one exemption, one quiet window. Even those three are enough to tell you within a week whether mornings look any different.
Sources
- ALL CONNECT, survey on children’s smartphone use (300 parents of elementary and junior-high students in Japan, conducted December 3–17, 2025): 40% of children used an iPhone, 34% Android — https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000157.000070245.html
- Google For Families Help, “Manage your child’s screen time” — https://support.google.com/families/answer/7103340
- Google For Families Help, “Set app time limits on your child’s device” — https://support.google.com/families/answer/15957417
- Google For Families Help, “Set a schedule on your child’s device” — https://support.google.com/families/answer/15938652
- Google For Families Help, “Get started with Family Link” — https://support.google.com/families/answer/7101025
Setting names change when apps are updated; if a label doesn’t match, check the current wording in Google’s help pages. This article summarizes published survey findings and official documentation, and is not medical diagnosis or advice.
FAQ
- How do I limit screen time on my child's Android phone?
- Use Google's Family Link app. Pick your child at the top left, tap Screen time at the bottom left, and from there you can set a Daily limit, a Weekly schedule, App limits, and Downtime or School time schedules. Google documents support for Android 7.0 and later, or ChromeOS 83 and later.
- Can my child still reach me while Family Link limits are on?
- Yes. Per Google's help, calls can be made at any time during a schedule, and apps marked as Always allowed keep working. Sending messages works only if that messaging app is always allowed, so turn on No app limit for the apps you don't want interrupted first.
- What can't Family Link do?
- Google states four limits: system apps can't have app limits, it can't manage iPhones, iPads or computers other than Chromebooks, purchase approval only covers Google Play billing, and supervision is designed for children under 13 or the local equivalent age.
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