Every parent is quite concerned about their child. In today’s generation internet is limitless. It is necessary to keep an eye on your ward and to track their activity in order to avert them from being exposed to undesirable or adult content. It can have quite a drastic effect on the mentality of a child. Numerous applications are paying particular attention to create some special mode for children in order to prevent them from different content that they are not supposed to see. Being a parent is not a simple task, you may want to control your child’s smartphone and restrict their usage for the greater good. It is the responsibility of every to ensure the well-being of their child. For every parent’s child’s safety is a major
concern, it cannot be compromised at any cost.
Here is the exciting part. XDA developers have developed something you parents have wished for a long time. Yes, that’s right Heimdall has been introduced! You may be quite familiar with the name. This name comes from a popular Marvel Comics character Thor. Heimdall is known for its ability to see anything across the nine realms or universe literally. Now you might have an idea what this application might do. Let me be clear, Heimdall does not allow you to control child’s device remotely. You must install it in your ward’s smartphone. This application was developed by the French developer for his own family. This is great that he wants to share it with the rest of the world.
Now the question is how it can help?
After you install the application on your child’s phone, you have to set a four-digit pin so that your child cannot uninstall the app from his/her device. You will receive a prompt to configure the application as a device admin. This application will allow you to limit or block installing a new application from Google Play Store. It will enable the set limit on call duration and also keeping an eye on YouTube activities of your loved ones.
Now I am going to list the features that it offers:
- It limits call duration.
- It keeps in mind to switch on the YouTube’s parental filter enabled.
- Tracks down your child’s activities over applications and network.
- A new app cannot be installed without your permission. It restricts the Play Store.
- You can track your child’s location (It comes with the paid version).
- It can block or limit the installed application completely/partially by adding time limits.
- Most importantly it blocks the illegal and adult websites (Porn sites) with its web filtering feature (comes with the paid version).
Let’s know more about the privacy involved
Heimdall is responsible for almost everything on your child’s smartphone or tablet. However, I found one drawback since it is an offline application it does not gives you any remote access. If you are going with the paid version of this application, by network filtering feature Heimdall will send the Hostnames of internet usage and search requests, for example, google.com, facebook.com, etc.
How much it costs for the pro version?
The version costs around 9.49 dollars for the lifetime subscription. However, if you can’t afford a lifetime subscription, you can also go with the monthly subscription as well. It costs around 0.99 dollars.
Now let’s know about its cons
As I have mentioned above the biggest con as per me is that it does not allow remote access. A parental control application without remote access is unbelievable. I feel it should be one of the most crucial features of the application. Secondly, you cannot schedule a block on your kid’s device with this application. What I am trying to see if you cannot block all the activities of the device when your kids are at school or when it is bedtime. I feel this feature should be added. But overall it is a great application. Being a personal project of the developer, it wasn’t meant to be commercial. So I may give it a pass.
Conclusion
In the end, I personally feel it is not bad at this point being a non-commercial application. If the developer plans to commercialize it, it can definitely get better with its upcoming updates. It has got some pretty cool features, and it is helpful to a lot of users as of now. So go ahead and use it and improve your child’s security. I hope this information is helpful.
