Making sure your kids are safe is an inseparable part of parenthood. This includes keeping them safe from threats, online and in-person, and knowing where they are in case they’re in danger. By knowing where your kids are, you will be able to keep tabs on them so that they don’t get into trouble. Remember when you or your parents could walk around the neighborhood without being in danger? Well, those times are past, and in 2022, you must be aware of where your children are at all times.
There are different apps and devices you can use to track your child’s phone and throughout this article, we have reviewed and tested some of them. Continue reading to find out what is the best location-tracking app for parents.
List of Location Tracking Apps for Parents
Since there are many apps for location tracking, we had to review many apps to be able to come to an accurate conclusion. Here is a list of the apps and what they’re best for.
Safes: Best Overall
Life360: Best for exclusively tracking location FamiGuard: Best Android tracking app for parents Find My Kids: Best free child tracking app for iPhone and Android Find My: Best iOS location tracking app iSharing: Best iOS family tracking app FamiSafe: Good for parents looking for an app with simplicity and a variety of features Net Nanny: Best for call logging and location tracking |
Safes
The Safes Parental Control app has been around for a shorter time compared to other apps we reviewed. However, it has performed considerably better, which is why it’s considered by many to be the best find my kids app. The Safes app lets you track your child in real-time and be in the loop of where they are at any time with pinpoint accuracy. You can additionally get driving reports which help you know where your child has driven to during the day and how many trips they’ve had during the month.
Additionally, you can use Safes’s Geofence feature, which lets you set green zones at which the parental controls you want are automatically applied. You will also be notified when your child enters or leaves the green zones. The location tracking feature in Safes works both ways. Whenever your child feels in danger, they can request their parents’ location, and if approved, they can see where their parents are. The Screen Time feature allows you to set a daily limit on your child’s daily screen time allowance. To sum up, we think Safes is the best tracking app for families.
Life360
Since most children have smartphones with unlimited access to the internet, you can install tracking apps that require network and GPS access and rest easy knowing you can know where they are at all times. The Life360 app allows for real-time location tracking on both Android and iOS devices. This app offers invite-only family grouping, and you can set location alerts. By using the location alert feature, you can set certain locations that they shouldn’t go to and get alerts when they do go to those locations.
The other feature that Life360 offers is Crash Detection. This feature will immediately notify the parents if and when their child gets into a car accident. This app comes at a starting price of 9.99$ per month for premium users, and all of their plans include SOS and Crash Detection.
FamiGuard
The next app we reviewed was the FamiGuard app. This app allows you to set parameters so that when your child enters them, you will get notifications and can additionally set parental controls on their phone. The FamiGuard app also allows you to track your child’s location in real-time via GPS. However, to use this feature, their GPS must be on, and they should be connected to the internet. This app additionally offers email tracking, app blocking, and screen time limitations.
The app also offers your child’s location history, which allows you to know where your child has been during the day. The pricing for FamiGuard starts at 12.99$ per month, which is a bit higher than the average location tracking app.
Find My Kids
The Find My Kids app has been exclusively made to track kids’ GPS locations. This app has several features that help parents keep track of where their child has been throughout the day. The main reason this app has been reviewed in this article, amid its limited features compared to other apps, is its exclusive use in location tracking. By using this app, you can expect an accuracy of up to 12 meters when looking at your child’s location. You can also use this app on your kid’s smartwatch, making it a great app to keep track of family.
Furthermore, the Find My Kids app lets you listen to the surroundings of your kid’s phone, but this feature only works on Android. As a whole, this app comes with its own limitations, but if your child uses an Android phone, this is a good option. There are also several other choices you have which we will get into further in this article.
Find My
The Find My app is considered by many to be the best app for tracking your child on iOS. The Apple company combined two of its apps, Find my Friends & Find my iPhone, to make this app. Many parents ask: What is a good app to track my daughter’s iPhone? Well, the Find My app will help you do exactly that. You can use it to track your child in real-time and constantly be in the loop of their whereabouts.
Furthermore, this app can locate all kinds of Apple devices – iPads, Macs, iPhones, etc. In case you need to, you can also quickly lock your child’s device remotely. The option of erasing their data is also available in case their device gets stolen. However, the Find My app does not let you keep track of app activity on your child’s phone, which is a bit of a downer when you compare it to other location-tracking apps.
iSharing
The next iOS-exclusive app we reviewed was iSharing. You can privately and efficiently track your child’s location in real-time with high accuracy. As a parent, you’ll like iSharing’s next feature, which notifies you when your kid leaves or arrives at certain places. When compared with Find My, this app can be considered the best app for family tracking if you own an iOS device. If you also care about the user interface, you’ll find this app’s UI to be quite satisfactory.
Additionally, you can get summaries of your child’s driving habits and know where they’ve been throughout the day, which is very useful if your child is of driving age. Furthermore, you can get your kid’s location history but keep in mind that this and several other features are only available in the premium version.
FamiSafe
You can find most features you’re looking for, in the FamiSafe app. This app has a variety of features that allow parents to keep track of their children’s GPS location in real-time. You can use this app to know where your child has been throughout the day and be sure that they haven’t been to places they shouldn’t go to. FamiSafe is easy to use and can be a good choice, especially if you look for simplicity. FamiSafe also lets you define locations, and will notify you on your phone when your child enters or leaves them.
Furthermore, you can block website URLs and content categories on the web. This can be really useful when your child is in their early teens and is specifically looking for inappropriate content. The major positive features of FamiSafe are app blocking and activity reports. The app allows you to restrict access to any app on your child’s phone while also getting to know which apps take up most of their time. However, you can’t monitor your kids’ calls to know who they’re in contact with.
Net Nanny
The Net Nanny parental control app allows you to not only track your child’s location but also keep track of their activities on their phone. You can use Net Nanny’s features to track your child’s location any time of the day with high accuracy and get detailed reports of their location history throughout the day. Additionally, you can choose to be notified whenever your child tries to access the websites or categories that you have blocked. To further ensure your child’s online safety, you can limit their daily screen time so that they don’t become addicted to their screen.
The Net Nanny app will let you monitor your child’s texts and calls so that you can be sure your child isn’t in contact with the wrong people. The Block Pornography feature will keep your child from accidental exposure to mature content in a variety of ways which we will explain. The Net Nanny app filters keywords most often used on websites containing adult content. It also analyzes websites’ content in real-time. For example, if a website’s advertisement contains sexual content, it will be instantly blocked on your child’s phone. You will additionally be notified when your child comes across pornography, which is useful for most parents.
Concluding: What is the Best Location-Tracking App for Parents?
There are a number of apps and services you can use to track your child’s location and even apply parental controls on their devices. Throughout this article, we reviewed many popular apps that parents use to track their children, and we found that each had its own advantages and disadvantages. Some apps offer lower prices, while others offer more features, but among the apps we reviewed, the Safes Parental Control app had a better performance across the board. Although apps such as Find My that are made by Apple and optimized for Apple devices may sound better to some users, Safes offers the same seamless experience but with more features.