How to Make Your Smartphone, Computer, or Tablet Always Listen For Voice Commands

Always-listening voice commands are a big thing now. You don’t need an Xbox one or Amazon Echo for this — just make your phone, tablet, or computer always listen for voice commands.

These features don’t send everything you say to a central server. They just analyze the sound nearby until they notice you’ve said the activation phrase, and then they kick into action.

iPhone & iPad

But you can have your iPhone and iPad always listen for voice commands when it’s plugged in and charging. To activate this feature, open the Settings app, tap General, and tap Siri. Activate the “Allow “Hey Siri”” option here.Google added this feature to Android first, but Apple has followed — well, tentatively. There’s no way to have Siri on your iPhone or iPad always listening for your voice — Apple’s devices just don’t have the low-power audio processing chip they need for this feature.

When your iPhone or iPad is plugged in and charging, you can just say “Hey Siri” out loud to activate Siri. So, if you plug it in every night when you go to bed, you can say “Hey Siri” followed by “Set an alarm for 7 a.m.” to set an alarm for the next morning. You shouldn’t have to pause after saying “Hey Siri” — just keep talking normally.

Android

To enable this feature, open the “Google” app in your app drawer, tap the menu button at the top-left corner of the app, tap “Settings,” tap “Voice,” and tap “”OK Google” detection.”Android 5.0 Lollipop and 4.4 KitKat offer support for starting a voice command by just saying “OK Google” even when the screen is off, assuming your device has the hardware to support it. Even if you don’t have the special hardware, you can use “OK Google” from anywhere when your device’s screen is on or when it’s charging.

By default, it’s often just enabled for “From the Google app,” which allows you to say “OK Google” and start a voice command from within the Google app. You can also select “From any screen” and “OK Google” will work in any app when your screen is on — or while charging it. You may also be able to choose “Always on,” depending on your device’s charger. Choose this option and you can start using voice commands even when your device’s screen is off. The options here allow you to control whether personal results are shown when your screen is locked.

Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS

These features haven’t really made their ways to desktop operating systems. Microsoft is working on Integrating Cortana into Windows 10, but it’s not available yet. Apple hasn’t integrated Siri into Mac OS X.

Google has integrated “OK Google” support into Google Chrome. By default, you can click the microphone icon on the new tab page or Google.com to start a voice search.

But you can also have Chrome listen for “OK Google” so you don’t have to click that icon. Visit the Settings page in Chrome and search for “OK Google” — or click “Advanced settings” and scroll down to the Privacy section. Enable the “Enable OK Google” check box.

You can now open the new tab page or Google’s homepage and just say “OK Google” out loud to start a voice search. It doesn’t actually listen all of the time.

Google’s experimenting with adding always-on “OK Google” search to Chromebooks so it’ll be available whenever your screen is on. Expect to see this feature in future versions of Chrome OS.

Yes, there are voice commands built into Windows and Mac OS X but they’re probably not the sort of commands you’re looking for. They’re designed for navigating your desktop and are convenient, but they’re not the kind of smart commands you’ll find on a modern mobile device. They may still be useful — feel free to give them a look.

How to Force-Quit an Application on Any Smartphone, Computer, or Tablet

Ctrl+Alt+Delete isn’t just necessary on Windows and other desktop operating systems. Applications can freeze or get stuck in bad states on modern iPhones, iPads, and Android devices too.

Every operating system has a way to forcibly end misbehaving applications. After you do, you can relaunch them and they should hopefully work properly.

iPhone and iPad

This won’t help you save system resources. You don’t need to do this to close apps just because you’re no longer using them. But, if an app is frozen or otherwise stuck in a bad state, this is a way to force-close it and force it to restart from a clean state.To force-quit a running app on an iPhone or iPad, double-press the Home button to open the list of recently opened applications. Scroll to the left and right to find the app you want to close. Touch the app’s thumbnail and slide it upward and off the screen. The next time you open the app, it will restart from scratch.

Android

Touch one of the apps thumbnails or cards in the list and swipe it to the left or right, moving it off the screen. The app will be closed and will open from a clean state the next time you access it.The easiest way to force-quit apps on Androidis from the recent app switcher, too. Tap the multitasking button to open the list of recently accessed apps. On some devices, you may need to long-press the Home button or perform a different action if there’s no recent apps button.

As with on iOS, this isn’t something you should do unless you really have a reason to. You should generally let Android manage processes on its own — it’s the same reason why you shouldn’t use an automatic task killer.

Windows

Windows 8 has a nicer looking Task Manager, but Windows 7’s works just fine, too. Locate the window or application you want to force-quit and click the ‘End task” button.Use the Task Manager to do this on Windows. You don’t have to use Ctrl+Alt+Delete to open the Task Manager — a quicker way is pressing Ctrl+Shift+Escape. Or, with the mouse, right-click your taskbar and select the Task Manager shortcut.

You can force-quit “Store apps” from the Task Manager on Windows 8. You can also place your finger on the top of the screen and move it down until the app becomes a thumbnail, Move the thumbnail to the bottom of the screen. When it switches from a thumbnail of the currently running application to the generic tile image of the current application, release it. Windows will close the Store app.

Mac OS X

You can also hold the Option key and right-click an app’s icon on the dock. and then click the Force Quit option.On Mac OS X, press Command+Option+Escape to open the Force Quit Applications dialog. You can also just click the Apple menu on your menu bar and select Force Quit. This tool will help you quit those apps.

If you need a more powerful tool that also lists background processes and allows you to kill them, open the Activity Monitor application.

Linux

Linux has its own set of utilities for force-closing desktop applications and killing processes. Each desktop environment includes its own process-management tool — like the Activity Monitor tool on Ubuntu’s Unity and GNOME-based desktops. There’s also the xkill command, which allows you to click a window and immediately close it. And, because this is Linux, there are many other terminal commands for quickly managing those processes.

Chrome OS (and Chrome)

Chrome OS uses Chrome’s task manager. Click the menu button, point to More tools, and select Task Manager to open it — or just press Shift+Esc on a Chromebook. Select one of the processes and click End Process to end it.

This also lets you manage the different processes Chrome uses for web pages, apps, and extensions when you run Chrome on Windows, Mac, or Linux. If a web page or app is frozen, use Chrome’s own Task Manager to identify the misbehaving process and kill it.

There are more powerful options for this, too. Mac OS X and Linux have powerful terminal commands for managing processes, and Windows has PowerShell cmdlets for killing processes. On Android, third-party apps can manage processes, and you’ll also find buttons for forcing apps to close in Android’s list of apps on the Settings screen.

How to Add a Hotspot Shortcut to the Android Home Screen

Portable Wi-Fi hotspots on your Android phone are great, because hotel Wi-Fi usually isn’t, but toggling that hotspot on and off is a pain. Here are several easy ways to add a hotspot widget to your home screen.Chances are pretty good you’ll need to create a portable hotspot on your Android smartphone at one time or another. Aside from the previously mentioned problems with hotel Wi-Fi, there are just places that (gulp!) still don’t have Wi-Fi access. It’s never a big deal until you’ve got work to do on your laptop, at which point, a portable hotspot is the way to go.

Sadly, Android doesn’t make it necessarily easy to enable your hotspot. There’s no dedicated hotspot button or shortcut option. If you’re doing it the way most others do it, then you have to dig into the settings to turn it on.

You can do this in five steps, which is a lot, especially if you have to remember how to get there each time: open the app drawer then tap “Settings” -> “More” -> “Tethering & portable hotspot” -> “Portable Wi-Fi Hotspot”.

This is awkward and inconvenient. We use hotspots just often enough that we need a better way, so here are four.

Add a Shorter Route Via the Settings Widget

This isn’t the most perfect way to do it but it cuts down on a few steps. The Settings widget is available as a default Android widget, so it should be available on your system.

You can choose a shortcut to settings categories, once of which is “tethering & portable hotspot”.

Now you’ll have a new shortcut named, appropriately, “Tethering & portable hotspot” on your home screen.

When you tap it, it will open right to the settings page.

This will reduce the steps to turn your portable hotspot by three, to two.

Try the Toggle Folder Widget

Another widget, another way, but unlike the settings widget, this one gives you more options. The “toggle folder” widget let’s you create a folder of toggles on your home screen, of which one is the ability to simply turn your portable hotspot on and off.

The toggle folder widget will probably be one of the last of your widget selections.

Give your toggle folder a clever name, or not, and choose a button color, a theme, a background – it’s completely up to you.

When you’re finished however, tap “Done.”

The widget will be placed on your home screen, tap it, and you can add stuff.

Now we’ve got two ways to quickly turn a portable hotspot on and off.

And, one of the options in the first group of toggles will be “Hotspot (Wifi)”. Tap that to add it to the toggle folder.

Now, you have a button that let’s you toggle your portable hotspot, plus it tells you if it’s on or off, which you can just as easily determine from the notification bar.

The cool thing about the toggle folder is you can add more toggles, apps, or even custom items. Check out our article if you would like to learn more about adding and customizing toggle folders.

Try a Third Party Widget

The previous two methods both require two steps to turn your portable hotspot on and off. We tried but failed to find a standard Android way to do this in one go, so we had to consult the Play Store.

If you do a search for “hotspot widget,” you’ll see that there’s quite a few to choose from.

We tried WiFi Hotspot Widget and it works as intended. We don’t recommend this over one or the other, so find one that best works for you and your device.

When you tap the widget on your home screen, it immediately turns your portable hotspot on and glows blue. Tap it again and it turns it off – simple, painless, and only one step.

So there you have three simple ways to dramatically shorten the steps needed to turn your hotspot on and off.

Bonus Method: Use Cyanogenmod

We love Cyanogenmod because there’s just so much you can do; stuff you probably don’t know about unless you really play around with it. This includes adding toggles to the Quick Settings panel on the notification drawer, one of which is your portable hotspot.

To do this, first open the settings and navigate to the Personalization section, then tap “Notification drawer.”

On the next screen, tap “Quick Settings panel.”

And on the next screen, tap “Tiles and layout.”

You’re going to see your toggle tiles arrayed in a grid. You can press and hold tiles to drag and reorder, or drop them onto “Delete” to remove them.

Tap “Add” and you will be asked to choose a tile. You can add whatever you want, but the one we’re looking for is at the bottom. Tap “Wi-Fi AP” to add it to the Quick Settings panel.

Now, when you pull the Quick Settings down, you’ll have the option to turn your hotspot on or off.

In many ways, this is most efficient and preferable way of doing this, because it doesn’t take up a spot on your home screen and it’s in a logical place, among other settings.

So, there you have it, three basic ways to add a hotspot shortcut using basic Android, plus one bonus way using Cyanogenmod Android. Hopefully you’ll find at least one of these method useful, or maybe you have another way.

How to Set up Apple Pay and Google Wallet on Your Phone

In case you hadn’t noticed recently, paying for stuff with your phone is becoming a pretty big deal. If you have an Android phone or Apple iPhone and a bank account, then you already have everything you need to pay with a tap.

There’s a lot of discussion that swirls around mobile payments. Is it safe? How does it work? And, how do you set it up?

These are all good questions. The first one is easy. Mobile payment use NFC or Near Field Communication, which is the same technology you might have used when you tap two devices together to pair or share files.

Google and Apple use different methods of storing your financial information. If you want to learn more, we have a thorough comparison of Google Wallet versus Apple Pay.

The safety issue is evolving. As we’ve been learning the hard way with so many recent hacks, nothing and no one is really 100 percent secure. So, whether you’re robbed with an ATM skimmer, or an infrared camera to steal your PIN, crooks are going to figure out ways to part you from your money.

That said, mobile payments are as safe, if not safer, than using a card, and most assuredly than walking around with lots of cash. So, if you’re thinking of trying out mobile payment for yourself, then you still need to set them up, which is really easy.

Setting up Apple Pay

Apple Pay can be set up in your iPhone or iPad’s settings. Open the settings and then tap “Passbook & Apple Pay.”

You’ll need to add a credit or debit card, which is the first option

Before you can do anything, you have to enter your Apple ID password, sorry, Touch ID won’t work here.

Next, you have two choices, if you have a card on file with iTunes, you can use that one or you can set up Apple Pay to work with a different card.

If you decide to use the card on file, you’ll need to enter the security code from the back of the physical card.

Once you enter your security code, agree to the terms and conditions. It’s probably a good idea to read this document. Upon agreement, you’ll be asked if you consent to Passbook using your location when you use the Apple Pay app.

You don’t have to agree to this for Apple Pay to work.

Once you’ve added a card, it will be show up under the “Cards” section, you can tap any one to view or update details.

You can add more cards, in case you want to pay with a different one, such as if you go on a business trip or vacation. In any event, you can change the default card to another by tapping the “Default Card” option.

Below this, you can add and edit other pertinent information: billing and shipping addresses, email address, and phone number.

To use Apple Pay, tap you iOS device on the payment terminal while holding your finger on the Touch ID sensor. Apple Pay uses your fingerprint to authenticate transactions. You don’t have to unlock your phone first, which is a big advantage over Google Wallet.

Setting up Google Wallet

Google Wallet is an application on your phone or tablet and as such, can be found in your apps launcher. If you don’t have it on your device, it can be downloaded from the Play Store.

Things start out with a an intro tour. You can read it or you can skip it.

You need to enter a 4-digit PIN number. Remember this number because you will use it to access your Wallet and authenticate transactions. Note, if you use a PIN to unlock your phone,make sure your Google Wallet PIN is different.

We want to open “Set up tap and pay.”

The tap and pay setup will first ask you to accept the terms and conditions. You’ll then be required to add a credit card. If your Google Account already has a card associated with it, you can use that one.

If you do have a card associated with your Google Account, or you successfully add one, you’ll get a completion screen. The completion screen informs you that you only need to unlock your phone and tap a pay terminal to perform a Google Wallet transaction.

If you have questions about how tap and pay works, you can view a 6-step guide to it.

Google Wallet’s main app screen has several different offers, which you can explore on your own. For example, Wallet Balance lets you send money to friends, request money from others, transfer money from your Wallet to your bank, and so on.

Tap “Tap and pay ready:” to see what cards are associated with your Google Account, add another card, or edit the cards on file.

One useful thing you’ll want to probably do is to give your cards nicknames.

Back on the main Google Wallet screen, tap the three lines in the upper-left corner to open “My Wallet” options.

Many of these selections are the same as on the previous screen, though if you tap “Cards & accounts,” you can link a bank account such as checking or savings.

You’ll need to know your account and routing number to do this.

The “My Wallet” options also have Settings that you can adjust. Notable among these, you can turn tap and pay off or on, and disable notifications.

You can also opt-in (or out) of email updates, change your PIN (good to know), turn on real-time orders tracking, and view your monthly balance statements.

That’s all there really is to it, you’re now good-to-go. Next time you see a Google Wallet pay terminal, just take out your phone, unlock it, and tap to pay. Remember, you may have to enter your Google Wallet PIN to authenticate transactions. Again, make sure that if you use a PIN to unlock your phone, it is different than your Google Wallet PIN.

How to Reverse Tether an Android Smartphone or Tablet to Your PC

Typically, people tether their laptops to their Android phones, using the phone’s data connection to get online from anywhere. But you may also want to “reverse tether,” sharing your PC’s Internet connection with an Android phone or tablet.

There are a variety of ways to do this. You could use a Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth — or even reverse-tether entirely over a wired USB cable. It’s useful when your computer has an Internet connection, but your phone doesn’t.

Create a Wi-Fi Access Point

Of course, you’ll need Wi-Fi hardware to do this. A typical laptop will work just fine. If you want to reverse-tether an Android phone or tablet to a desktop computer that doesn’t have Wi-Fi so you can share its wired Ethernet connection, you can purchase an inexpensive USB-to-Wi-Fi adapter and use it for this purpose.The simplest method here will likely be to create a Wi-Fi hotspot. This is just like creating a Wi-Fi hotspot on your phone to share its mobile data connection with your PC or Mac. But, instead, you’ll be creating a Wi-Fi hotspot on your computer and sharing its Internet connection with your Android phone or tablet.

Android phones and tablets don’t support ad-hoc networks, but the Virtual Router software will create a Wi-Fi hotspot that functions as an access point, allowing Android devices to connect. If you’re using another solution, be sure it functions as an access point and not an ad-hoc network.

We recommend using Virtual Router for creating a Wi-Fi hotspot on a Windows PC. It’s a convenient front-end to the powerful Wi-Fi hotspot and Internet Connection Sharing features built into Windows. You can use it to share a wired Ethernet connection over Wi-Fi, or even share a Wi-Fi connection you’re connected to by creating a Wi-Fi hotspot. This makes it convenient in situations where you only have one login for a Wi-Fi network — like in a hotel.

Mac users could theoretically use the Internet Sharing feature built into Mac OS X for this, but that creates an ad-hoc network Android devices can’t connect to.

Bluetooth PAN

Typically, you’ll want to create a Wi-Fi hotspot if you use Windows and connect to the Internet through that. Wi-Fi is faster and easier to set up. However, a Bluetooth PAN is particularly useful on Macs — if you want to share a Mac’s Wi-Fi connection with an Android smartphone or tablet, you’ll need to use a Bluetooth PAN or get a second physical Wi-Fi adapter (like a USB-to-Wi-Fi adapter), as you need two separate network interfaces for this.You could also use Bluetooth for this. Assuming your phone or tablet runs Android 4.0 or newer, you can pair it over Bluetoothand use a Bluetooth PAN (Personal Area Network).

Enable Internet Sharing over Bluetooth on your Mac and pair your Android phone with your Mac. Tap the connected device on your Android device’s Bluetooth settings screen and enable the “Internet access” checkbox.

USB Cable – Root Only

This is possible, but it requires root access. We’ve covered a method to reverse-tether an Android phone or tablet to computer via a USB cable using a Windows application, and there are other similar methods that use different tools or commands you can type.It’s possible to tether your computer to an Android phone over USB, accessing the Internet via the phone. You might wonder if it’s possible to reverse-tether an Android phone or tablet to a computer via USB, accessing the Internet through the computer’s network connection.

The USB cable method is most useful when you’re in a location where you can’t use Wi-Fi or Bluetooth reverse-tethering for some reason. It’s obnoxious because of the requirement for root access and the additional hacks and tools required to get this working. Worse yet, some Android apps won’t actually realize they have an Internet connection if you do this. If possible, you’re better off setting up a Wi-Fi access point or using a Bluetooth PAN for reverse-tethering.

Unfortunately, none of these methods will work for a Chromebook. Despite Google’s attempts to make Chrome OS and Android work better together, a Chromebook can’t yet create a Wi-Fi hotspot or Bluetooth PAN to share its Internet connection with other devices.

That’s assuming you’re running Chrome OS, anyway — you could potentially put your Chromebook into developer mode and install a full Linux system to gain access to the Wi-Fi hotspot-creation tools built into typical Linux distributions.

How to Share Google Play Apps, Music, and More Between Android Devices

We recently showed you how to configure your iOS devices for app and media sharing; more than a few people wrote in asking how to do the same thing with Google Play purchases. Read on as we dig into how to share purchases across your Android devices.

Why Do I Want to Do This?

The motivation for wanting to share purchases between your Android devices is simple: it’s inconvenient and costly to purchase multiple copies of everything for every person in your household.

Unfortunately there is no built-in mechanism for easily sharing content among spouses or family members as there is with both the Apple and Amazon ecosystem. Earlier this year both companies introduced sharing/family systems; Apple has Family Sharing and Amazon as Family Library which both more or less accomplish the same thing.

Given that Google has yet to roll out anything at all in the family-sharing department, we’re left cobbling together a solution on our own. This is, frankly, a gross oversight on Google’s part and given that their competitors have already rolled out sharing systems to better serve the highly interconnected tech-oriented families of today we really hope they get their act together and introduce a sharing plan for the Play Store.

Fortunately there is a way, albeit via a more winding path, to accomplish our ends and share our apps and content across multiple devices. In the next section we’ll outline two approaches and then show you how to apply them.

What Do I Need?

There are two ways you can approach the problem of Play Store content sharing across devices. One is what we’d call the discovered-the-problem-too-late solution and the other is what we’d call the planning-ahead solution. In the end they both work but the planning-ahead solution is definitely superior. Let’s look at both.

Sharing Your Primary Account

You likely already have a Google Play account with a significant number of purchases on it. These purchases are permanently linked to your account and, you guessed it, the only way to share them is to share your account with the other devices owned by your family members.

This solution works because the Google Play application and the greater Android operating system allow for multiple accounts. Thus your son or daughter can have their own device with their own Google account for email, calendar, and other functions but have a secondary account on the device that pulls down Google Play data from your account.

The downside to this solution is that it requires you to share your primary account with members of your family and though you can turn off data syncing between apps (such that your email and calendar updates aren’t pushed out to everyone in your family) they can be turned back on fairly easily and your family members can gain access to your account.

From a privacy standpoint this is clearly problematic but we’ll leave it at your discretion as to whether or not this is a workable solution for your family. If it’s just you and your spouse and you’re not worried about them reading your email and you already share your calendar with them, then it’s not much of an issue. If you’d prefer your teenage children to not have access to your email you’ll want to look at the next proposed solution.

Sharing a Dedicated Content Account

The more ideal solution is to create a Google account dedicated to sharing content. This solution is the planning-ahead solution as it works much better if you started with this method and made all your purchases on the sharing account from the start.

Thus everyone in your family will have their own accounts (if necessary and age appropriate) on their Android devices, as well as the family account that syncs the app and media purchases across all the devices. From Google’s perspective all your devices are simply primary and secondary devices of the account holder you’ve created.As we highlighted in the previous section you can add multiple Google accounts to Android devices. While most people use this feature to manage their own personal stable of Google accounts (personal email, work email, etc.) it’s also very useful for our purpose. In the case of the dedicated account solution you create a Google account whose sole purpose is to serve as a content purchasing and delivery account across all your devices.

This is the most ideal solution as there are no privacy risks, all purchases are pooled in one location, and you can even take advantage of the new account’s central email inbox and calendar if you wish to have a family email inbox (where, say, grandparents can email the whole family) and a family calendar everyone can edit.

The only downside of this solution is that, if you implement it late in the game, you may already have numerous non-transferrable purchases on your original Google account.

Adding and Configuring the Account

Which ever route you choose the process, with some very minor variations related to syncing and privacy, is identical. Let’s walk through the process of adding a new Google account to an Android device. Although there are differences between the different versions of Android so our screenshots might not look identical to what you see on your device the option is built into Android and a little poking around the menus will reveal it.

Before we proceed you’ll need the username and password of the account which will sync apps and purchases across the devices (whether that’s your primary account or a dedicated account you’ve just created to serve as the family-sharing account).

Adding the Account

Gather up all the Android devices you wish to add the sharing account to. For demonstration purposes we will be adding a dedicated sharing account to a device but the steps are the same regardless of whether you’re using your primary account or a secondary account.

Navigate to the Settings menu on your Android device and scroll down until you see the Accounts section. At the bottom of the Accounts section is an “Add account” shortcut.

In the sub-menu select “Google” to add in the account.

You’ll be prompted to either create a new account or plug in the credentials for an existing account. Plug in the appropriate credentials for either your primary account or the account you’ve created explicitly for the Play Store.

Once you’ve successfully signed in the with account you’ll be prompted to review the data syncing settings.

For the strict purposes of sharing apps and content you don’t actually need to check anything. You can uncheck every single syncing option. The secondary devices will still have access to the shared account and the Play Store and all its content. If you want to automatically sync books and other media, however, you’ll want to check the boxes as seen in the screenshot above to sync Books, Movies & TV, and Newsstand.

You can make adjustments to these settings later by returning to the Settings -> Accounts, selecting Google, and then selecting the appropriate account from the list.

Accessing the Account In Google Play

Now that the account is on the device we just need to pop over to the Play Store app and show you how to access it. Launch the Play Store app now.

Select the menu button in the upper left corner, represented by the three lines in the search box.

In the application menu you’ll find two locations you can click on to access the secondary account on the device. As seen in the screenshot above and indicated by the red arrows you can either click on the new profile icon (the blue icon up top) or you can click on the account selection menu (the white arrow icon at bottom) to select one specific account from many. If you only have the primary account and the secondary account on the device it’s easy enough to just tap the icon up top as there is no chance of selecting the wrong account.

Once you’ve select the other account you can then access all the content purchased by that account and download it to your device.

To configure Google Play Books, Movies & TV, and Music you simply need to open the respective applications, click on the identical three-line menu button in the upper left corner, and select the appropriate account in each application so that the shared library is the default library for each service on the device.

Setting Purchase and Content Restrictions

One final bit of business you may wish to attend to (given the age of your children) is purchase and content restrictions. Return to the Play Store app and open up the menu. Ensure you’re currently using the account whose settings you wish to change (e.g. the secondary family sharing account) and then select the “Settings” option near the bottom of the menu.

There you’ll find the following options roughly half-way down the list.

If you select content filtering you will be prompted to select what level of apps your child has access to using an Everyone-Low-Medium-High maturity rating system or simply leaving all apps available; once you make your selection you’ll lock the application/content with a PIN. You can read more about what each of those levels entails here.

In addition to filtering content you can also require authentication for purchases. Your options are “For all purchases through Google Play on this device”, “Every 30 minutes”, and “Never”. Requiring a password for all purchases not only stops your child from purchasing new content but also from racking up bills in freemium-style games as they won’t be able to drop $99 on 100 gems/smurf berries/mega potions or the like without your authorization.

Unfortunately the setup here is kind of a mish-mash of very useful and sort-of useful. The content filtering, for example, only applies to the applications in the app store and not to media content like movies or music. Further, when you look in the settings of all the other media apps the only content filtering to be found is that you can filter explicit lyrics in the Play Music store (but you can just uncheck the box). On the other hand the purchase restrictions apply to anyPlay purchases across the entire device.

It would be nice if Google would work on implementing cross-content filtering. As it stands now the purchase authentication works to restrict purchases in Play Books (even free books are a “purchase” and require the account password) but it doesn’t have any effect in the Play Movies & TV app as any free content is available including free episodes of very mature programming like the very graphic supernatural thriller TV series Salem. That’s definitely something to keep in mind when configuring devices for younger children.

While a cobbled together solution is better than no solution at all, we’re definitely looking forward to Google releasing a legitimate family sharing system with proper content sharing and restrictions.