Bark - Parental Controls
July 19, 2024
More About Bark - Parental Controls
Bark monitors your child’s text messages, email, YouTube, and 30+ apps and social media platforms for issues like cyberbullying, suicidal ideation, adult content, sexual predators, profanity, threats of violence, and more. Parents receive alerts only when something potentially problematic occurs online. You won’t have full access to everything on your child’s phone — just the things you might need to know about.
SCREEN TIME MANAGEMENT
Families can set healthy time limits and create schedules for when their children’s devices can connect to the internet (through both cell service and Wi-Fi).
WEB FILTERING
Our web filter lets you select which websites your child can access on their devices. You can allow or block specific sites — or even whole categories like streaming services, online gaming, sexual content, and more.
BARK HOME
When you purchase Bark Home, a small device sold separately that connects to your Wi-Fi router, you can use our app to manage screen time and filter websites and apps on all of the Wi-Fi-connected devices in your home, from smart TVs and video game consoles to laptops and tablets. Bark Home requires an active Bark subscription.
PRICING
Bark, our comprehensive online safety solution, includes content monitoring, screen time management, and web filtering. Bark is $14/month — or $99 annually.
Bark Jr provides screen time management and web filtering for $5/month or $49 annually.
SETTING UP BARK
After you download the Bark app for parents and guardians, you’ll need to download the Bark for Kids app to your child’s device to enable monitoring, screen time management, and more. Visit www.bark.us/android to install it.
Latest Version
5.3.5
July 19, 2024
Bark Technologies, Inc.
Internet
Android
647,705
Free
cm.pt.barkparent
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User Reviews
Clint Kromhout
3 years ago
The app worked well for about a year. Since then, the VPN feature, which is required to make the app work, has turned my child's phone Samsung Galaxy S7 into a brick. They can't do anything with the VPN on. Hence, the app is useless because they have to turn the VPN off in order to actually use the phone, it's features, or apps. Also, the apps keep disconnecting. That then requires 15-20 minutes reconnecting/ diagnosing. Sadly, we're going to find another option.
Ken Smith
1 year ago
Excessively complex, missing key features. I'm a technology guy, but even so, it was a pain to get it setup on my kid's phone. After an hour or so I got it working, only to discover that it has no way of setting screen time limits (e.g., max 2 hours a day or whatever). Even the features that it has require lots of time and effort to configure - but then they can't even get basic screen time limits. I cancelled our subscription.
D Te
2 years ago
There is nothing intuitive about using this app. When setting times, you can't just go in and set a weekly routine all at once. At best, you can do a time peroid for one day, then go back.in and apply it to the other days, then repeat for for next time period. Also, there is no filter for the alerts, say if you want to search by application or a particular word, or if you're looking for images. And why does a confirmation come up everytime I block or allow a single app? Very annoying.
Stephanie Jares
3 years ago
Absolutely awful! It says it works for iOS but it is an absolute NIGHTMARE to get it figured out. You have to install so many things and must have a home computer. I installed the Bark on my home computer then was told i had to install iTunes. I did so.. still didn't work. I did a bunch of troubleshooting and still will not work. Canceled subscription and will move on to a different app.
Adolfo Rodriguez
2 years ago
This app has a pretty bad UX and performance. Nothing is intuitive. I don't have a high sense of confidence that what I want to be protected is actually happening. Rules are hard to set up. It's hard to get a sense on any real insights. I can't simply manage screen time or even see what boundaries I have really set. I can't see real time location. I have given this app over a year and I still can't figure it out. It's like a collection of engineering driven features developed by multiple silos.
Allgirls
2 years ago
Doesn't work well at all! I agree with everyone that has stated it is not consistent. There is no # to call customer service, I email with video & screen shots of what errors I have and still can't get anything resolved! I've had the app less than a month. Had the 7 day free trial, worked fine. As soon as it charged my card after the trial was over, hasn't worked since!!
Michelle Smith
1 year ago
This app is a joke. So many problems, no real humans to get help from. I started the 7 day free trial, which I had to give them a credit card for. They immediately billed me for their annual subscription. After realizing this app is awful, 3 days later, I canceled it. The screen popped up and said my account would stay active for a year. That is 100% absolute fraud. I have emailed their billing department, so we'll see if they do the right thing and refund my money.
Cameron Andre
2 years ago
Features all sound great, and the interface is decent...but it's basically impossible to use at this point. Setup is very difficult: if you want to monitor a child's device, you need to install a program on a computer, but it has to be Windows or Apple, no Chromebook. Manually connect the child's device to the computer, but then the monitoring is done over your WiFi network...unless the connection doesn't work, then send an email for support. App monitoring not compatible with iPhones?
Dawn Marie
4 years ago
I used to LOVE this app. That was before their recent update. Prior to the update it ran seamlessly in the background and I received useful information. Since the update it will not monitor iOS devices although other WiFi applications on our PC do connect. I've invested a solid 4 hours checking firewalls, connections, VPN accessibility and then it occured to me "Why am I doing this?". This update was not well tested. I'm taking a break and will check back with you in a couple of months.
Dray Snyder
1 year ago
If you are monitoring an Android, I think this app would be great! Unfortunately I'm monitoring Apple products, and so it's almost useless. When it functions, it functions great, but you can pretty much count on it changing the device protection daily, so until I plug the devices back into the computer, they aren't getting analyzed, which is a super inconvenience. What's worse is I don't get notified they aren't connected and being analyzed until days later.
Brandon Baker
1 year ago
Interesting product. It seems to have the concept, but the app is unreliable. It does a good job of scanning the social media apps, and we get the alerts from TikTok, Snapchat, Spotify, YouTube, and others. The issue is it struggles to toggle between blocking an app and allowing the app. There's times when you want to block an app for the rest of the night, but it doesn't seem to work. It also seems to have issues monitoring the phone. I finally got a notification after 4 days.
wouldnt you like to know
1 year ago
Didn't work. Install had some errors, app blocker didnt block apps, VPN completely broke several allowed apps, play store wouldn't work even when permitted, and it took about 3 seconds to find sexual content on the Internet that was not filtered by the content filter. Also there is zero customer service. I had reported the installation errors before I discovered all the other issues and their support is email only - no live chat (not counting their stupid AI thing), no phone number to call.
Ashley Menning
1 year ago
Great idea, poor product. I have had nothing but trouble with the phone itself, and we got the starter phone with no apps. They respond quickly to issues, but the issues take hours for you to deal with, not them. So customer service has rapid responses, I give them credit for that, but expect to be troubleshooting yourself with an emailed list of instructions, with up to three options depending on which screen you see. Once our contract is over, we will be done.
Carolina Tello Zeleski
1 year ago
The device is a nightmare to setup. The instructional videos are inaccurate and miss critical steps. The app is messy, spammy, and difficult to manage. It's completely messed our entire setup at home and we can't wait for customer service to get back to us so we can be rid of it and never see it again. We are a family of game developers, so tech savvy, and it's amazing to us this is a product that's met quality assurance to be sold to the public.
Alishia Cebula
1 year ago
I've had this app installed for a couple days now and I hate that you can't delete multiple alerts at a time. Because the app is so sensitive I get tons of alerts from my pre teen and I'd like to be able to keep my alerts empty but there's hundreds of alerts I have to individually delete. **Edit to respond to Bark** There's no adjusting the sensitivity, there's just turn it on or off. Also, I'm more talking about being able to delete multiple alerts at once instead of one by one.
Stephanie Grijalva
1 year ago
This app has worked great for the past few years for our family. I love the text monitoring without having to read every text,and the alerts to all media available. Last fall, August 2023, we started experiencing issues with the app shutting off a cess to the Internet completely. When I disable the VPN, everything works great. I have spent several hours working with tech support but the issue returns on all devices within days. It is affecting the usage and we will have to stop using this.
Kendra West
1 year ago
The service is a valuable tool for parents, when it works. Unfortunately it usually doesn't. It loses connection with my son's phone and computer on a near daily basis and this is the second time we've had this occur in two years with different devices. We have updated, troubleshot, and reinstalled things repeatedly, and it still has the same problems. We may try the service again pending more positive user reviews that don't reflect similar problems to what we keep encountering.
Matthew Walsh
1 year ago
Sadly Bark falls short when it comes to actual control features. It is a fancy VPN so it only controls internet traffic. It does nothing for games or apps that do not require the internet to run. It doesn't block installation of apps. And because it's just a VPN it doesn't always start with the phone, and a clever child can easily bypass it and search whatever they want.
Veronica Patt
1 year ago
UPDATE: Trying this app again and all I get are nonstop "(your child) has account issues that need to be fixed" messages. The app says devices are connected but I hardly get alerts. And if a device is an iPhone, forget about it. $14/m for all these issues? I can't even sign up for the free trial as my unexpired cards keep coming back as expired. If the system doesn't even work when starting a subscription then there isn't much promise for the rest of the app.
Dawn Koch
11 months ago
Most frustrating app that I have to pay for. It's great when it works, but when it doesn't, get ready for a very frustrating 30 minutes to get everything fixed. And, it stops working for no reason. I just went through all the troubleshooting tips and finally got my son's phone to show up (again) so Bark can analyze it. Since it's an iPhone, the passcode needs to be entered. It has literally asked for the pass code SIX times then it says there's a problem analyzing the device.
