summary
- Google Messages adds parental controls for conversations. This is a much-needed feature for concerned parents.
- This feature hides message content and prompts your child to ask for approval before viewing or sending certain messages.
- Parental controls within Messages could become part of the Family Link app, which already offers extensive monitoring options across Android devices.
Google Messages is bundled by default with some of the best Android smartphones available today. Like most messaging apps, Messages changes from time to time, including the recent and somewhat controversial revamp of the in-app camera UI. We are currently encountering another new Google Messages feature in development related to parental controls.
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How to enable, disable, and use RCS chat in Google Messages
Perhaps it’s time to move on from the old SMS standard
First discovered by the famous Google App Decoder assemble debugthe latest Google Messages beta 20240416_00_RC01 Contains a flag to enable parental control of conversations (via PiunikaWeb). Sources say the feature has been in the works for some time, but can now be enabled by flipping some (unspecified) flags. Details of the setup process are currently lacking, but the corresponding screenshots show how the message content is hidden.
Opening a restricted personal or group chat returns an empty conversation with the words “.”Please ask a parent for approval to sendOn the other hand, chat lists also do not reveal the content of the messages and instead ask children to get permission from their parents or guardians. PiunikaWeb states that these parental controls can be applied to both regular SMS conversations and RCS chats.
This feature may be part of the Family Link app
There isn’t much information available on how users can enable advanced parental controls for Google Messages. However, as PiunikaWeb predicts, it may be bundled with what is currently available. family link The app offers extensive parental controls across the Android ecosystem, including the ability to see where your child is on a map and set screen time limits.
This feature is still in development, so it may take some time before it rolls out to Messages users around the world. Nevertheless, considering that messaging is an important part of our lives today, this is a much-needed feature in the app. With this in mind, giving parents the option of knowing who their child is texting while simultaneously hiding certain conversations from their view is a good start.
Hiding conversations from a child’s view seems tailored to situations where the parent’s main phone is shared with the child. Therefore, it may not apply if your child has their own smartphone.
