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Qustodio review – A Parental Control App with a Bonus
You might be surprised that parental control software falls into the productivity and anti-distraction category. Read to the end, and perhaps your surprise will diminish a little.
As an example of a parental control app, I have chosen Qustodio. It’s a fairly popular software used by millions of parents around the world. In the Play Store, it has over a million downloads.
So, why can parental control be an incredibly good choice as a productivity app? The answer is simple. Such apps have all the functionality that apps designed specifically for productivity offer.
What is Qustodio
In my opinion, Qustodio is an ideal option for parents who want to improve their productivity. Allow me to explain. Qustodio offers excellent protection, monitoring, and control over your child’s phone. However, its functionality is also perfectly suited for enhancing an adult’s productivity.
On the basic plan, Qustodio supports up to 5 devices. This should be enough for both you and your children. Thus, by paying for a single app, you address two important needs at once: the need to improve your productivity and the need for digital security.
Moreover, since Qustodio is geared towards children, I assume that special attention has been given to data reliability and security.
Very Detailed Usage Statistics
In the main menu, if you go to your profile, you can see extremely detailed usage statistics:
Thought about usage statistics and blocked websites for a few seconds
Piecing together
I’m translating Ukrainian to English, maintaining Markdown headers. The menu covers thorough online behavior analysis, highlighting blocked websites, including adult content sites like Reddit.
Maintaining consistency
OK, let me see. I’m sticking with “Qustodio” for the product name. The translation includes Markdown-style headers, ensuring clarity and consistency throughout the document.
Below is the translated text with headers highlighted using Markdown formatting:
In this menu, there is practically everything you need for a completely thorough analysis of your online behavior.
Blocked Websites
In this section of the Qustodio menu, you will see all the websites that fall under adult content. This could be Reddit, as in my case, adult websites, etc. Any blocked websites will be displayed here.
On devices, it will appear as follows:
Also, the following notification will be sent to your email:
Accordingly, if you add Reddit to the whitelist, you will not receive such notifications.
Web-activity
If you simply want to review your online activity, you need to navigate to the Timeline section, filter by Web-activity, and then your entire history of visited websites will appear in chronological order.
If you click on the three dots, an additional menu will appear where you can:
Allow
This is the same as Ignore. In other words, if a website or app has been added to the block list, then Allow and Ignore remove it from this list. You will no longer receive notifications that you visited that page.
Alert me
In the event that a website or app is in the allowed list but you feel that you would like to receive notifications about visits to such sites, then add it to Alert Me.
This Qustodio app functionality can be used to combat habitual patterns of behavior. For example, if you want to limit—not ban—news browsing, simply add a notification when you visit a news site. This will draw your attention to your harmful habits. Sometimes, this is much more effective than outright banning.
View details
You can also view more information about a specific website to decide whether to block it or not.
QuStodio Timeline
Here you can view all your activity in chronological order. Additionally, you can sort by websites, apps, search queries, calls, etc. It’s very convenient, although it doesn’t show how much time you’ve spent in each category.
QuStodio Rules
This is your command center. Here you can fully customize the app to your liking.
The app is so customizable that hardly any productivity apps can boast similar features. Perhaps this is because, according to some psychological theories, sometimes our distractions and procrastination are like a child living inside of us. That’s why a parental control app suits us so well—it allows us to control our inner child.
Web Filtering
On this page, you configure the behavior of websites—their filtering, categorization, notifications, and more:
Categories Filters
Categories are a standard feature for all similar apps. Here, all the website categories found on the internet are actually compiled. You can assign three different actions to them:
- Allow: Add to the whitelist
- Alert Me: Send an email notification every time the website is visited
- Block: Prevent you from visiting that website
The downside is that these groups cannot be edited or viewed to see which websites they include. However, the website database is very extensive. With the blocked “News” group, I was unable to visit any well-known news portal.
Websites
In this menu section, you will find a list of all the websites that you have manually added to either the blocked list or the Alert Me list. Here, these lists can be edited, and you can remove websites from them.
QuStodio Web Settings
Sometimes, without even realizing it, you try to outsmart yourself and access your favorite social networks through another browser, such as Tor, so that it doesn’t get included in the overall statistics. By default, this is blocked in QuStodio. You can change this by disabling the Block Unsupported Browsers feature.
Also, if a website you visit is somehow absent from QuStodio’s database, it can be blocked by default. This feature needs to be activated.
The next feature, Enforce Safe Search, is primarily intended for children. This option removes any potentially harmful search results from search engines. Although this feature is enabled by default, I would recommend disabling it because the search results become too sanitized.
QuStodio Alerts
It’s very simple here. You can choose whether you want to receive notifications when you visit blocked websites or not.
You can also decide if you want to receive notifications when you enter potentially dangerous search queries. This feature is designed with children in mind. For example, I once searched for information about a Canon camera and received a notification about a dangerous search.
How can you use this? Very simply. You surely have several search phrases that you use when procrastinating. Just add them to the list so that every time you start procrastinating and searching those queries, you receive an email notification reminding you that you’re doing something wrong.
Games & Apps
In the Games & Apps section, Qustodio allows the user to control interactions with games and applications both on a computer and on mobile devices. Just like with websites, you can add an app or game to the whitelist or block it. Additionally, you can limit session durations. Personally, this is a particularly important option for me. I allow myself to play computer games twice a week for one hour. The limited session format is ideal for this kind of arrangement.
It also works if you’ve spent too long on social networks, etc. I’ll show an example setup using Instagram. Every day, after the workday ends, I dedicate 15 minutes to checking Instagram. Here’s how it looks in Qustodio.
Daily Time Limits
Daily Time Limits by Qustodio allows you to set a recurring schedule for each day. For each day of the week, you can set a usage limit for your device. All logged-in devices are taken into account. That is, if you spend 2 hours on your phone and 1 hour on your computer, that totals 3 hours.
By default, there are no restrictions, but if you suffer from spending too much time on devices, I recommend activating this feature.
Additionally, you can separately specify what will happen when the limit is exceeded. You have several options:
When Time’s UP
- Lock Device – Once the time limit is reached, all apps will be locked on Android devices, and on iPhone, all apps will be hidden. Additionally, if desired, you can disable web browsing and internet access.
- Alert me – A milder option where you simply receive a notification upon reaching the time limit. This option can also be combined with disabling browsing and internet access.
Routines
Routines in Qustodio allow you to create your own schedule. You can allocate separate time slots for entertainment, studying, relaxation, and more.
Thanks to such advanced settings, you can build your ideal schedule.
Now, I will show you, using my own example, how you can construct your perfect schedule.
Block Games Qustodio
I’ll start with downtime. As I mentioned earlier, I play computer games for one hour twice a week on weekends.
Qustodio Study
By default, there is a Study feature in the settings. However, I wouldn’t recommend it, as it blocks all work-related apps. Instead, I would create my own custom scenario where you block the sites you want to avoid during work.
And also the categories of websites that you want to avoid during the workday:
After this, you will be given the opportunity to change the visual aspects of this mode.
And in the next step, you can choose when you want to activate these restrictions:
And of course, what would we do without a sleep mode? This aspect is also addressed in Qustodio. I usually go to bed at 10:00 PM. However, recommendations advise against looking at any screen an hour before sleep. Therefore, I set the sleep mode from 9:00 PM to 7:00 AM, from Monday to Friday.
After all the settings, which take no more than 5 minutes, you have an excellent daily routine with reminders or restrictions tailored to your taste.
Panic Button
Another feature that might interest us is the Panic Button. It’s useful not only for children. Although this functionality is available on most smartphones, its operation isn’t always clear and, for example, may not allow you to press a button 5 times, etc.
In the app, it is implemented very simply. All you need to do is open the app and press the SOS button. After that, a message with your exact GPS coordinates will be sent via email to your trusted contacts. Additionally, an email will be sent if the SOS is canceled.
Not only children can get into trouble, so this is quite convenient. Moreover, it’s a way to quickly share your location with someone close to you. I do miss having this button accessible from the status menu, but overall it’s a very useful feature that can come in handy not just for children.
QuStudio YouTube
A separate section is dedicated to YouTube. Here you can see the number of videos you have watched during the day, what you have searched for on YouTube, how many times, as well as links to your YouTube watch history.
It’s quite useful for analyzing your relationship with YouTube, isn’t it?
Also, in Rules, there is a separate section to manage YouTube settings.
It can be configured to prevent it from opening in the browser, block it entirely, or set a daily usage limit. Overall, it provides the same functionality as for other apps, just placed in a separate menu.
Additionally, as a bonus, you can activate Daily Device Usage Reports via email, as well as weekly ones. These reports will indicate how much time you’ve spent.
Conclusion
Pros:
- Extremely Rich Functionality
- Ability to monitor search queries both on search engines and on YouTube
- Exceptionally flexible settings. For example, you can block a specific search query in a search engine—not just block it, but also set it to merely notify you when that keyword is searched.
- Ability to build a schedule for activations
- Very user-friendly menu
- Predefined website categories
- A large database of apps, websites, and search queries that are already categorized and marked as safe or unsafe
- Easy synchronization between devices
- Detailed device usage statistics
- Panic Button
- Stealth mode – meaning the app icon is hidden and you don’t notice the app is running
Cons:
- In the time statistics, you cannot remove an app. For example, if I used the harmless Google Maps for one hour, that time is added to the total usage. I don’t like this because it makes it impossible to filter out productive versus non-productive time. I understand that it’s unreasonable to expect this functionality from an app designed for parental control, but if you plan to use Qustodio as a productivity tool, you should know this.
- During configuration, I was frequently logged out of the dashboard—every 5–10 minutes. This is sufficient to complete all the necessary settings, but it is a bit inconvenient.
- There are no built-in work-related settings. Again, this isn’t a productivity app per se, so it’s completely normal. However, be aware that if you want to tailor it to your work processes, you’ll need to spend an extra 5–7 minutes configuring it.
- The free trial only lasts 3 days. This is enough to understand what the app is about and whether it suits you, but given the limited time, you need to use it intensively to fully familiarize yourself with the app.
A very good dual-purpose app. It has all the necessary functions for both controlling children’s devices and as a tool to boost productivity for adults.
As I mentioned at the beginning, Qustodio app is ideal for parents who have children whose devices need to be monitored and, at the same time, want to improve their own productivity.
Qustodio offers reporting, alerts, blocking, restrictions, monitoring, etc.—truly an extremely powerful set of features.
If you’re looking for a simpler, more focused productivity tool that blocks distractions without parental control features, check out our Hey Focus review.
FAQ
What are the negatives of Qustodio?
- Inability to remove an app from time statistics, making it difficult to separate productive and non-productive time.
- Frequent logouts from the dashboard during configuration (every 5–10 minutes).
- No built-in work-related settings, requiring manual customization for productivity use.
- A very short free trial of only 3 days, which may not be enough for thorough evaluation.
Can kids disable Qustodio?
No, Qustodio runs in stealth mode, meaning the app icon is hidden, and it operates without being easily noticeable. Additionally, unsupported browsers like Tor are blocked by default to prevent bypassing restrictions.
How much does Qustodio cost per month?
Starting from 42.95$/ year with 3 days free trial
What can my parents see on Qustodio?
Parents can monitor a variety of activities through Qustodio, including:
- Detailed usage statistics of websites and apps.
- Blocked website attempts, including adult content and social media.
- Web activity history in chronological order.
- Search queries, both on search engines and YouTube.
- Time spent on devices and individual apps.
- Alerts for potentially dangerous or restricted searches.
- Reports on overall device usage, including daily and weekly summaries.