February 14th, 2019
Hi! Boomerang now has a new and improved approach to app and screen time tracking. It is important to update your child's device yourself as we have new permissions to accept - please update your child's device today.
What's New
- Full screen blocking (introduction of new permissions, more below): On some devices, crafty kids were finding cheeky ways to bypass our app blocking. We feel we have achieved a milestone with our new approach. It's full screen, it's a cleaner experience and best of all, we take over the whole screen. Kids cannot hit the back button, home or multi-window button. They have to interact with the buttons on our block screen.
- Prevent Multi-Window from bypassing our time limits or blocked apps on non-Samsung devices
- Child Mode opens by default to the My Stats tab
- Improved support for Moto devices
- Better handling of blocking Guest Mode switching
Upgrading Tips
2 new permissions are now required with this latest update, "Display over other apps" and "App Usage Stats or Usage Access". On most devices, Boomerang should prompt automatically after upgrading for these permissions which are located under the Android Settings. Both will provide a toggle to turn them on. In some cases we may not be able to direct you to the exact screen so you will need to find them inside Android Settings on your child device. We recommend you "search" in the Android Settings for "display over" and "usage".
After Upgrading - Please test
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Open any App for a few seconds. Open Boomerang and in the My Stats tab, do you see this app’s usage?
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Are previously blocked apps still blocked?
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Do time-outs or time extensions work (must do this from Parent Mode)?
Comments
1 comment
I can't get the app usage stats permission to be accepted while adding a new device to our family plan. I'm trying to add a galaxy s10, but when I set the permissions on the app usage part it won't go past them. It just sits there.
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