Parental Control - Kroha

Review by eFreeware

Keeping an eye on a child's phone is one of those jobs that gets harder as the child gets older. You want to know where they are, how long they have been on the screen, and what they are running into online, without standing over their shoulder. Parental Control Kroha, from the developer of the same name, is built for exactly that gap. It is a free parenting app for Android with in-app purchases, and it has been on Google Play since May 2018.

The pitch covers a lot of ground: location tracking, screen time management, app blocking, website filtering, chat monitoring, and a couple of features that go further than most tools in this space. The app has over a million installs and a 4.7 average from more than 35,000 ratings, which suggests a large number of families have at least found it workable. What I want to do here is separate the parts that sound genuinely useful from the parts that ask a lot of the parent setting them up.

Where your child is, and where they have been

The family locator side is straightforward in concept. You see your child's position on a map as it updates, and you can draw a geo-zone around a place that matters, such as home or a school, then receive a notification when the child leaves it. For a parent whose main worry is a child walking home alone or wandering off after practice, this is the feature that does the most work with the least friction.

There is also a device-level detail layer: the app reports the battery level of your child's phone, and you can look through their phonebook and recent photos. Those are smaller conveniences rather than headline tools, but they round out the picture of what is happening on the device. I would treat them as context rather than surveillance, since a low battery warning is often the difference between a calm evening and a worried one.

Screen time, app limits and locking the phone down

The screen time side is where the app gets practical. It shows a breakdown of daily phone usage, tracks how much time goes to individual apps, and lets you set a daily limit for a specific app. You can also block apps, games and social media outright, or schedule restrictions for bedtime, study time and family time. The developer says limits can be adjusted remotely, so you are not chasing the phone to change a setting.

That combination is what most parents actually need: a hard stop at night, a cap on the apps that eat an afternoon, and a way to open things up again when circumstances change. The scheduling angle matters more than the blocking angle in my view, because a rule that fits a school week rarely fits a vacation. Being able to set it once and adjust it from your own phone is the difference between a system that survives contact with real life and one that gets abandoned in a fortnight.

Sound, camera and the more invasive tools

Two features stand out because they go beyond what a typical screen time app offers. The first is sound around the child: you can connect remotely to the microphone on your child's device, or send a request to record audio, with each recording lasting 30 seconds. When the recording is finished you get a notification and can listen to it. The second is camera access, which lets a parent take screenshots and photos using either the front or rear camera to see the surroundings.

These are the features that will divide parents. Used rarely and with a clear reason, they can answer a specific worry. Used as a habit, they change the character of the relationship, and I would think hard about which of the two you are building. The developer presents both as safety tools, and that is how they read on the page, but the choice of when to reach for them is entirely yours.

Websites, YouTube and chat monitoring

Content filtering covers the usual ground. The app filters the websites your child visits, monitors which YouTube videos they have watched and lets you block the ones you consider inappropriate, and can turn on Safe Search for their searches. Messenger chats are monitored as well, and the app keeps browsing and messenger history so you can review reports on how the device has been used.

This is the part of the app that depends most on the permissions it requests. The developer notes that the VPN permission is used to block and filter websites, that Device Administrator permission is used, and that the Accessibility Service permission is what allows browsing history, YouTube history and instant messenger history to be saved — and also what detects attempts to uninstall the app. Those are significant asks, and they are the price of the monitoring working at all. If you are not comfortable granting them, the filtering and history features are the ones you lose.

Setting it up on two phones

Getting started requires the app on both devices: your own phone and your child's. You link the family devices to a single account, with each device activated in either Parent mode or Kids mode. Both phones need to be able to transfer data over the network, because the app sends and receives configuration commands that way, so a working connection on both ends is part of the deal rather than an optional extra.

The developer also passes along a troubleshooting note that applies to this category generally: battery saving settings on the child's phone should be adjusted, or the system may cut the app off in the background. The one-year license covers five family devices, and the same account serves the whole family, which is a sensible shape for households with more than one child or a spare tablet in the mix. What the subscription costs is listed on the developer's site rather than in the app's store entry, so it is worth checking there before you commit.

Eyes, blue light and the smaller touches

Two features sit slightly apart from the monitoring theme. Eyes Protection is designed to keep the phone screen at a sensible distance from your child's eyes, and Night Mode reduces the intense blue light in the evening. Neither is a parental control tool in the strict sense; they are habits the app nudges the child toward, and they are the kind of thing that quietly does more good than a blocklist if the child actually leaves them on.

I like that they are included, because a parental control app that only ever says no tends to breed workarounds. Giving the child something that makes their own screen time more comfortable is a small counterweight. It is not the reason to install the app, but it is a reasonable reason to keep it.

Which families this fits

This app is built for parents of children who have their own Android phone and enough independence to be out of sight for parts of the day. The combination of location tracking, screen time limits and content filtering is aimed at the years when a child is trusted to travel and to choose their own apps, but not yet trusted entirely. If your household has several children with devices, the five-device license and single account are a better fit than juggling separate tools.

The parents who get the most from it are likely the ones who want one dashboard rather than four apps, and who are willing to spend an evening on setup and permissions. The features that monitor sound, camera and messages are the ones to think about before you start, because they set the tone for everything else. A parent who only wants app limits and a location pin will still find those here, and can leave the rest untouched.

A capable toolkit if you accept what it asks

Parental Control Kroha covers more ground than most apps in the parenting category: location and geo-zones, screen time and app limits, blocking for apps and websites, YouTube and messenger monitoring, audio and camera access, plus the smaller extras like battery level and phonebook monitoring. The 4.7 average across more than 35,000 ratings suggests the breadth has landed with a lot of families, and the app is still being updated, with a maintenance release in May 2026.

The trade-offs are real and worth naming. It is free to install but carries in-app purchases, with the one-year license covering five devices and pricing listed on the developer's site. It needs the app on both phones, an account linking them, a network connection on both, and a set of permissions that includes VPN, Device Administrator and Accessibility Service. Those permissions are what make the filtering and history features possible, and they are also the reason to read carefully before granting them.

If you want a single app to cover location, limits and filtering for a household of Android devices, and you are prepared to set it up properly and think about how far you want the monitoring to go, this is a reasonable place to start. If you only want a bedtime cutoff on one phone, the feature set here is larger than that job requires.

What's new in version 3.14.4

• Minor bugfixes