This is honestly the best monitoring app I’ve tried, and I’ve tried a few. Yes, iPhones are tricky and you have to install iTunes on a laptop and go through a whole set up. But after the initial install it has managed itself. Every now and then my laptop will unsync with the wifi and I have to link it again, but as soon as I do, I can see my daughter’s phone being backed up into iTunes. My recommendation is to go read the Bark Kids reviews. They’re comedy gold. They are so angry with this app doing what it was designed for. If only they understood that the app actually helps maintain a sense of privacy because it only alerts when there’s something wrong so parents don’t have to physically take the phone and read through all the typical teenage angst and rants. My advice: never freak at the alerts, open and read the content before approaching your child. I once got a suicide alert and what I read broke my heart. A friend’s mother had attempted suicide and the friend was sharing with my child. I had time to process how I wanted to approach this subject with my child (we had never talked about suicide) and we had a great talk. I purchased the annual membership right away.

Apple has tried very hard to make security a top priority unfortunately, because of that, using this app on an iOS device or even a Mac desktop to computer has become an absolute nightmare. They are constantly bugs to fix. Forget trying to add a new device when your kid gets a new iphone or iPad. I I have deleted old devices only to have them repeatedly pop up again while the new devices won’t show it. I sit there trying to look at all the unknown devices trying to match up the number to identified advice. Sometimes there’s 10 or more but the one I need never shows. One time the reason the device wouldn’t connect was because I was using a different charger for my daughter‘s iPhone because hers was broken. Apparently only the original Apple cord would work so I had to go get a new one. Ridiculous. I have spent hours, literally hours, trying to fix these things over the years. And no, despite all the ads they send, I do not want to buy a Bark phone. I will say customer support tries to send really helpful emails, but I’ve often followed all the directions and still had to go back-and-forth with customer support for days and you absolutely will not get a person on the phone. I will say customer support via email is very friendly but the amount of effort I’ve had to put in to keep my monitoring going just isn’t worth the time anymore for me.

It is completely useless for older children who know how to delete an app. I wasn’t sure if it was possible for my daughter to delete it, so I tried to see if I could delete it off her phone and sure enough I was able to. I did not get any notification until 30 minutes later. When I looked at the notification, all it said was my child’s account needs attention or something vague like that. This is the same as all other notifications such as when the VPN is being spotty, so I had no idea it was complete removed from my daughter’s phone. Thankfully I do not have any concerns about my daughter’s mental health, but in theory 30 minutes is ample time for a child to delete the app, look up how to commit suicide, and commit the act. Similarly, 30 mins is ample time to look up that photo or video or whatever that they’re dying to see that Bark would have blocked. This is a major issue and I no longer see the utility of this app for a tech-savvy pre-teen. I understand that Bark’s suggestion to circumvent this issue is to use Apple Screen Time to put parental controls on deleting apps, but the entire purpose of purchasing an app such as Bark is because of the very well known unreliability of Apple’s Screen Time. I should not purchase an app subscription and be told to rely on an external app in order for it to do its job. Very disappointed.