As much as I love Google (not even a little, my love for that company is negative and becoming more negative per second) I would love to run far far away from it. Here's another ball and chain I need to break.

Where can I find a simple parental control access system for my phone and or computer that I allow my kids to use?

For your computer: https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/parental-controls.html.en

For the Phone I'd create a second profile on the phone and only install the apps there which I'd allow my children to use.

Nothing really exists.

The likely extreme thing I did was setup ManageEngine's MDM+ (free for<25 users) and put my sons phone on a "device profile" which locks it down. It's decently intuitive, but does require a "server" so there's a bit of setup too. I use YT at work too so for me it was done in 30 minutes.

What is it?

Overkill, otherwise there’s parental controls built-in to iOS/Android

https://github.com/fleetdm/fleet

No, not really.

I have a whole complex setup including unique profiles and auth with unique limitations per user on services, like what books are available on the eBook server, what shows/movies they can see, even which block list is applied for DNS.

But things like app restrictions on a tablet are entirely manual. I kiosked off and will manually install via adb.

There isnt really an equivalent single tool I'm aware of.

Yeah that looks though.

Yeah it's called FamilyLink and works over Google servers.

Parental Controls

It's called MDM. Unfortunately most companies try to limit their MDM solutions to enterprises, but FleetDM is an okay choice.

Probably not then

what type of phone/OS are your phone and computer?

there's some hands-on controls too that may be useful but it starts with just giving them their own profile or login that's ideally with as few permissions as possible.
For android, there's profiles which you may be able to lock down a bit more than your own profile.
Apple had family mode settings that you may be able to turn on and off when they have the device.
For a computer, same approach. Standard user account with whatever you installed using an admin account and lock down content via DNS like cloudflare for families, https://adguard-dns.io/public-dns.html, a self hosted one or something like https://nextdns.io/.

Its Android

depending on your router, couldn't you do this at that level? a combination of public dns (dns4eu) or adguard filter lists? you could create two wifi networks, one controlled one not; most routers let you block whole services too like tiktok, etc

That only prevents phone connectivity over WiFi. Turning off WiFi and using mobile data bypasses it. Using offline applications and games (or even Plex/Jellyfin etc) can bypass it too.

Family link does more than stop internet access at certain times, it allows setting usage limits by device and by app.

dns4eu

Use Mullvad DNS instead, it's a very blatant honeypot.

Aren’t they going to shutdown their DNS and use someone’s else’s?

Not a perfect solution, but I use NextDNS which has profiles, and can set allowed services and times of day for them, Online Games, Video Streaming etc. This is set in the phone's DNS setting so works via WiFi or cellular.

I've started to use the excellent DNS Toggle on my phone to quickly enable/disable it for the really annoying sites that block ad blockers etc.

In terms of app control itself, I still use Family Link begrudgingly as well like you for Android phones. I access it via the web page which thankfully still works so I don't have to have the Google app installed.

There are on-device controls, built-in to the OS

https://support.google.com/android/answer/16766047?hl=en#%3A~%3Atext=features.-%2CManage+on-device+controls%2C-After

Seemingly only on the newest version of android...we have a tablet running android 15, and it doesn't have local parental control.

Mullvad's CEO finances fascists, please don't.

There are parental controls, but it's rare. FOSS projects usually aren't very keen on building systems of authority, even parental ones.

For smartphones check out /e/OS (Murena Smartphones). They added parental controls recently, not sure how good those are though.

For computers your best bet's probably a Linux with Gnome. They also added something recently.

You might be able to combine both with a custom DNS service, surely there's something out there for that usecase (NextDNS?). But that's already getting pretty complex.

oh fair point, yeah, i was thinking about just tablets and computers; that makes sense.

mullvad is into the same shit dhh is into; i use the unfiltered dns4eu, quad9, and adguard servers, round robin (since i have my adguard filters set up at the router level and browser level).

I use GrapheneOS with a restricted user profile and OpenTimeLimit for my daughter. The phone always connects to our home network using wireguard and automate.

Works reasonably well, can do all kinds of complex scenarios with time limits, different groups that are allowed always, at different times, never, etc.

Even blocks all kinds of system apps such that by default even Wallpaper changes are blocked.

Only thing that is open for me is web access. Currently, no browser is installed in the profile, but at some point she might need it. Will probably do NextDNS or similar. Too much hassle to do all that locally.

Most other things run on my homeserver (dawarich for family tracking, ha access, adblocking pihole, jellyfin, immich, etc etc)

if you want to lock your phone to one app when you hand it to them you can use app pinning in settings. otherwise look into creating a user profile and see what you can do to lock that down.

Android has app-pinning, iOS has guided access. They are functionally the same thing, in that they lock the phone to a single app. Basically a sort of kiosk mode.

Barring that, if you really want some form of parental controls for the kids, I would recommend just getting a phone from the likes of Pinwheel, Gabb, Bark, etc. They are purpose-built for kids.

For PC, at least on Linux, there is an application called timekpr-next that handles screentime. It's pretty handy.

Last time I tried it all the actually useful stuff was locked behind a pay wall. Plus you have to wipe your phone to install it.

What is family link? Active directory control for Android?

For straight up app control, timelimit does a far bit of what your asking.

It's basically Google sticking its long long schlong between you and your kids.

Imagine you trying to open the door to your house and a Google rep shows up, asks you for a password and opens the door only when you have given it your password.

Imagine that same scenario when you try to do anything at home... Looking for underwater? Password please! Start you car? Nope, unless you got password. C'mon satisfy lord Google's requirements!

So you want your kids to go on your phone that you purchased? First you need internet or this retarded process doesn't work. Mmkay! You got Internet, now install a spy app on both phones and you're good! Now just be sure you're online and then give us the password, we'll unlock your kids' phone for the given amount of time.

And that's what family link is. It's a stupid excuse by Google to have their spying app installed on your phone.

OMG you gotta look at this:

And

Nah, man. The answer is kids don't need to be on the internet. They need to not be on the internet or on a data plan until they go to college and they gotta pay for that service.

I am not 100% sure it is available in English, but have a look at KiSi (Salfeld).

Imho the best parental control app - while it is not free it is run by a small German company (I had very delightful contact with the founder), falls under the GDPR, offers very flexible scenarios, a windows client that offers roaming, various options to lock down the internet (whitelist/blacklist both manually or curated), reporting (what webpages are consumed, which are blocked, what apps are used how long). Times can be set per group and both by the time of the day and by usages times (e.g. this group can always be used, this can only be used during the day and this group can only be used weekday afternoons and weekend all day but only for 2h per week across the PC and the smartphone). It also allows requesting access/more usage times via a "parents Version" of the app.

It's not self hosted, it currently does not support Linux, but after testing basically everything on the market I accepted that one.
Funny enough now eldest has asked for the already massively reduced access(no social media, only limited Youtube, mainly wikipedia and similar sites whitelisted) to be blocked during certain hours of the day (and their PC access blocked as well - which is a different beast as we use FreeIPA and Fedora) so they have 90min of focus time for homework.

I don't understand the tone of this comment. Family link is voluntary. It is lame, yes, and it is just barely useful, but it offers some handy controls if you want to limit what your kid can access on an android device. It would be preferable for me to have a good kiosk mode, but I haven't seen anything that met my needs.

Thanks, I'll look into these.

Damn..