Do you wish you could remotely lock someone’s phone from your phone so that you can restrict your kid’s excessive use of smartphones? But is that even possible? Yes, it’s possible you can actually lock another phone remotely, do you want to know how? Keep reading the article and I will share with you the tactics to lock someone’s cell phone without even touching it.
How To Lock A Phone From Another Phone?
See, it is not possible to lock a phone remotely without hacking it, and for that, you will need the help of third-party apps. These apps are called iPhone or Android spyware or parental control apps because they are also used to track your kids. In this article, we will have a look at two such applications that will allow you to lock someone’s cell phone remotely.
1) Using Google Family Link
If you and your kids both use an Android phone then Google Family Link is the best option for you to remotely lock their phone for free. Although this service is also available for iPhone, it works better on Android since it’s owned by Google itself.
You need to set up the Google Family link on both your and your child’s phone and then you can remotely control it and access various information about the child’s device in detail. Here’s a step-by-step procedure on how you can use Family Link from Google.
a) First you need to set up the Family Link app on your and the child’s device. You can watch the video below to successfully set up your Google Family Link account.
b) After successful setup, you can now monitor their online activities and also restrict your kids’ screen time by locking their phone from your phone. To do so you need to go to the Family link app on your phone and then tap on their profile icon or tap on View at the bottom right corner.
c) Now you can scroll down to the Screen time section and set it up. Firstly you can edit the daily limit and sleep time. The daily limit by default is set to 3 hours, but you can increase or decrease it at your convenience. Similarly, the sleep time is set to 21:00 to 7:00 hours, which again you can change accordingly.
d) Once the screen time reaches the daily limit or it’s time to sleep then the phone will lock automatically and the kid will get a message on their screen like this.
After their phone is locked they will get no notifications and can’t use their phone for any other purpose, but the call feature is not blocked because they may want to call you for some emergency.
e) Apart from setting the daily limit and bedtime you can also remotely lock your child’s phone in real-time. This feature is only accessible after you set up the screen time for the first time. The next time you go to the dashboard you can see the lock/unlock option from where you can remotely lock or unlock the target device anytime you want.
So that’s how you can lock another phone remotely with Google Family Link, it’s easy, effective, and most importantly free. However, it lacks lots of tracking features like Geofencing, Explicit Content Detection, Speed Limit, etc. If you want to use these features to ensure the complete protection of your kids then you can make use of third-party parental control apps like the one I am going to discuss below.
2) Using FamiSafe
FamiSafe is a parental control app that you can use to remotely lock and unlock Android and iOS devices from another phone. Like Google Family Link, you have to first sign up for the FamiSafe account and sync your device to the target phone. You can find the complete installation steps here.
Once FamiSafe is completely set up you can follow these steps to lock or unlock another phone remotely.
a) Log into your FamiSafe account on a desktop or your phone.
You can install the FamiSafe app on your phone from Play Store and monitor your kid’s activity on the go. The steps remain the same for both desktop and phone so you can follow the below steps on both devices.
b) Now once you are on the FamiSafe dashboard go to Features and select Screen time.
c) Under screen time you get multiple options to set a screen time or lock all the apps on the phone so they can’t use anything on it. To block everything toggle on the Instant Block option.
d) As soon as you toggle on the Instant Block all the apps will be locked on the target phone. Your kids will get a message like this on their phone whenever they try to open any application on their phone so basically, their phone will be locked.
e) By default the calls feature is kept unlocked for emergency situations. You can add more features to the allowed list by clicking on the plus icon in front of them in the Allowed Apps section. These apps will remain unaffected by Instant Block and Screen Time features and kids can use them all the time.
So that is how you can lock an Android phone remotely with the help of the FamiSafe parental control app.
Final Verdict
If your child is using his or her phone for more than 2-3 hours a day then you should stop them immediately because there are bad consequences of excessive screen time in kids. However, you can’t be around them all the time to see if they are using their phone or not, hence you should invest in apps that allow you remotely lock and unlock the kid’s device at your will. The power to lock someone’s cell phone from distance can allow you to restrict the increasing screen time of your kids.
You can make use of Google Family Link if you are looking for basic monitoring along with the ability to lock someone’s phone remotely. However, if you want advanced monitoring features then FamiSafe is an overall good option to control someone’s cell phone remotely.
