PearGuard

PearGuard sets screen time limits and app rules on a child's device from a parent's phone. There is no account, no web dashboard, no subscription and no company in between. The two devices pair with a link or QR code and talk directly to each other.

Every other product in this category shows the parent a web dashboard, which is why the child's activity has to sit on a company's servers for the product to work at all, and why it is usually sold as a yearly subscription. PearGuard has no dashboard, no server and no subscription, and those are really the same fact three times over. The parent's device signs a policy update, the child's device checks it came from the paired parent and applies it offline. Activity stays on the two paired devices.

It covers daily time budgets, bedtime windows, per-app allow, block and limit rules, a view of what was used and when, and a request flow where the child can ask for extra time and the parent approves it from their own phone.

The scope is deliberately narrow. There is no message scanning, no image scanning, no browsing history, no location and no web filtering, because all of those need a cloud pipeline reading the child's activity. It also does not hide itself from the child. It is built to be a household rule rather than covert monitoring.

The child device runs Android, Windows or Linux. The parent device runs Android or iOS. iOS cannot be the child device because it does not expose the enforcement APIs. On desktop, enforcement runs in user space and is deterrence rather than containment, so a technically capable child with admin rights can defeat it. Android is the stronger enforcement path.