Block an app, pause it for school hours, or let it through. Your call, per app.

Three states, one list

Open Apps in your panel and you see every app installed on the phone, with the time it was used today. Each one is set to one of three states.

• Allowed. The app runs normally. A newly paired phone starts with everything allowed; TheTruthSpy blocks nothing on its own.
• Limited. The app runs, but with a daily cap of its own, separate from the overall screen-time budget. An hour of YouTube inside a two-hour day, say.
• Blocked. The app will not open. Tap it and the child sees a TheTruthSpy screen saying so, with the reason and, if there is one, the time it unpauses.

You can also set a state for a whole category, so “Games: limited to 45 minutes” covers every game at once, including ones installed later.

Schedules: blocked for now, not for ever

Most of the time a parent does not want to ban an app; they want it out of the way during school, or after bedtime, or until homework is done. A schedule does that. Pick the days and hours, pick the apps or categories, and they are blocked inside the window and allowed outside it.

Two schedules cover most families. School hours, Monday to Friday, blocking social and games while leaving the calculator and the school portal alone. Bedtime, every night, blocking everything except the phone, the clock and messages to family. Both can be adjusted for a weekend or a holiday with a couple of taps, and the change reaches the phone within a minute.

New apps: blocked until you have looked

A rule you set today says nothing about the app your child installs tomorrow. So TheTruthSpy has a switch: new apps start blocked. When it is on, anything installed after you set it arrives in the Blocked state and appears in your panel with a note saying it is waiting for you. You look at it, decide, and it either opens or stays shut. When the switch is off, new apps arrive allowed, and you still get an alert for any app installed from outside the Play Store.

This is the setting that keeps a carefully built setup from quietly falling apart over a term.

What the child sees

A blocked app is not a mystery on the child's phone. Tapping it opens a TheTruthSpy screen that says which rule blocked it, when it comes back, and offers a button to ask for a one-off unlock. That request lands in your panel with the app's name, and you tap yes or no. The dinner-table argument about Snapchat becomes a notification you can answer from the sofa.

Every rule you set is listed on the child's What is shared screen, too. There is no rule you can apply that they cannot read.

Blocking the apps that get around blocking

A determined teenager will look for a way round the filter, and the usual routes are a VPN app, a proxy browser or a second app store. TheTruthSpy lists these under their own category so you can block the category once. Combined with the new-apps-start-blocked rule and the off-store install alert, that closes most of the doors without you having to know the name of every workaround app. The browsing history shows blocked proxy attempts, which is usually how you find out the filter is being tested.

Setting it up

1. Pair the phone with the six-character code from your panel. The app blocker is in both builds.
2. Grant the usage and accessibility permissions when Android asks. They are what let TheTruthSpy see which app is open and pause it.
3. Leave everything allowed for the first few days and look at the usage times. Then set states where they are needed, not everywhere.
4. Add a School hours schedule and a Bedtime schedule. Switch on new apps start blocked if you want to see new installs before they run.
5. Show your child the blocked-app screen and the ask-to-unlock button so the first time they hit it is not a surprise.