KidTether: Safe Kid Mode

The 30-second "here, use my phone" mode — built for parents, not for enrolling a kid's own device. Every other kid-safety app assumes your child has their own phone to manage. KidTether is for the much more common moment: you're handing them your phone for ten minutes, and you don't want to worry about what they'll tap. Two modes, picked for the age: - Toddler Kiosk — the phone shows exactly one app you chose. Nothing else is reachable: no home screen, no app drawer, no settings. - Kid Grid — a small, parent-picked grid of apps for an older kid who can handle a few choices, with everything else still out of reach. Your PIN always gets your phone back. Press and hold the faint lock in the top-left corner for 2 seconds, type your PIN, and Kid Mode ends. Before your first hand-over, KidTether shows you exactly how. Forgot your PIN? Restart the phone in Safe Mode and uninstall KidTether — your phone and everything else on it are untouched. Our Terms of Use walk through the steps. A safer way to share photos. Handing over your real Gallery app means handing over the ability to delete real pictures. KidTether's built-in Photo Viewer lets you pick specific photos for your kid to look at — swipe through them freely, but nothing can be deleted, shared, or edited from inside Kid Mode. How KidTether uses the Accessibility Service KidTether uses Android's AccessibilityService API. This is required for its core feature: keeping your child inside the app(s) you chose while Kid Mode is on. - What it does: while Kid Mode is on, it notices when the app on screen changes, and if your child leaves the app(s) you chose, it brings them back. If your child pulls down the notification panel or another system panel during Kid Mode, it closes it. - What it doesn't do: it doesn't read the content of your screen, what you type, your messages or your passwords, and it doesn't act on your behalf in other apps. - Your data: nothing the service sees is collected, stored, or sent anywhere. It works entirely on your phone. - Only while you choose: it does nothing unless you've turned Kid Mode on, and you can switch the service off at any time in Settings → Accessibility → KidTether. You'll be asked to turn it on during setup, after an in-app explanation. KidTether won't enable it without you. What KidTether does not do: - It doesn't create an account for your child, or for you. - It doesn't run ads, analytics, or tracking of any kind, and doesn't sync anything to a server for its own purposes. The one exception: buying the app talks to Google Play directly, the same as any other Play purchase — KidTether itself never sees or stores your payment details. - It doesn't watch your child's messages, location, or screen time. That's a different kind of product for a different age group — if you need that, KidTether isn't it, and we'd rather tell you now than after you've paid for it. - It doesn't control what happens inside the apps you allow. Set up each app's own parental controls, and turn on purchase authentication in Google Play, so nothing gets bought without you. - It doesn't claim to be unbreakable. Kid Mode contains where your child can go on the phone — the app drawer, settings, and anything you didn't choose stay out of reach — but it is not a security product, and a determined teenager is not its target user. Try it free for 3 days. Then it's a one-time purchase — no subscription, ever. Pay once, keep it. No ads, in the free trial or after.