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5 min readBy Nate Bergstedt

Wanting to know what they're on, without tracking where they are

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If what you really want to know is what your child is doing on their phone, not where they are standing, a location app answers a different question. ParentSEE shows you the names of the apps and websites your child's devices reach, and it has no location data at all.

Maybe you started with a location app because it was the monitoring tool you had heard of, and now you feel uneasy watching a dot move around town. If that is you, this post is for you.

What ParentSEE does not see

  • Location. ParentSEE has no GPS, no map, and no history of where your child has been.
  • Messages, photos, searches, or what is on the screen.
  • The individual pages inside a website.
  • Time inside apps on iPhone (per-app time is Android only).

It also doesn't lock itself down. A determined child can remove it, because it does not hide on the phone. If a device stops reporting, you get an alert.

What a location app is built for

Life360 is a well-known example, so here is how Life360 describes what it does. Families join a "Circle" and share their real-time location with each other. Place Alerts tell you when someone arrives at or leaves a place like home or school. Life360 also offers crash detection, which can notify your Circle and emergency contacts after an accident.

Location also shows up in other tools. Google says Family Link can show you the location of your child's Android device, and Bark says its app can track your child's location with GPS.

Those are real safety features. If your worry is the drive home from practice, or whether your kid made it to school, a location app is built for exactly that.

What a map can't tell you

A map shows where the phone is. It doesn't show what is on it. If the thing on your mind is the new app they won't talk about, or what they're on late at night, the map doesn't help.

That is the part ParentSEE tries to answer, and it does it without knowing where anybody is.

What ParentSEE shows instead

  • The names of the websites and apps each device reaches, and when, on iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows and Chromebook. A name means the device contacted it, which is not always the same as your child opening it.
  • On Android, how long each app was actually open, measured by the phone itself.
  • On iPhone, the names, but not whether a name was the app or the website. The free Safari extension settles that for browser visits. It confirms the visit; it doesn't time it.
  • On Chromebook, the Chrome extension sees what happens in Chrome, which is nearly everything on a Chromebook. It doesn't see Android apps, other browsers, or incognito windows.
  • Alerts when a device reaches a site in a category you'd want to know about, such as a crisis line or adult content.
  • A weekly summary by email every Sunday.

It misses some things. In one test of 99 popular websites, opened in Chrome on an Android test device, it recorded 97. That was a test of websites, not apps. I wrote it up in What I can and can't see.

With the ParentSEE app on their phone, your child sees a status screen that says a parent can see which apps and websites they use, and that nothing they type, send, or search is read or blocked. I'd still tell your child before you set it up.

Why no location is a feature

ParentSEE has no location on purpose. Knowing where my kids are every minute isn't something I want, and it isn't something I think they should grow up assuming a parent always has. I also don't want to hold that data. Location we never collect can never leak, be sold, or be asked for. ParentSEE stores the names of websites and apps, never messages, photos, searches or passwords, and activity is deleted automatically after 90 days.

ParentSEE is $39.99 a year or $4.99 a month as of October 2026, and it is available in the United States only.

When another app is the better choice

If you need to know where your child is, ParentSEE can't help, and a location app such as Life360 is the right tool; on Android, Google Family Link can show you the device's location too. If you want crash detection or arrival alerts, Life360 offers those, and ParentSEE does not. If you want messages scanned for signs of bullying or self-harm, Bark does that and ParentSEE does not. If you want to set limits or block apps, Apple Screen Time and Google Family Link do that, and ParentSEE doesn't block anything. Some families use both side by side, because the two answer different questions.

The question underneath

When I think about the parents who end up here, I don't think the real question is "where are they?" I think it is "are they okay?" Location answers part of that. The names of what they are on answer another part, and they give you something concrete to ask about.

If that is the part you are missing, ParentSEE has a 14-day free trial, and you can reach me at support@parentsee.com with any question about what it can and can't see.

ParentSEE is not affiliated with or endorsed by Life360, Google, Bark or Apple. Product names are trademarks of their owners.

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