Lanternly helps you block harmful websites, set bedtimes and see screen time on your child’s Android phone. Your child can open their own app at any time and read every rule that is on. Nothing is hidden, from them or from you.
Free. Two small apps: one for you, one for your child’s phone. About five minutes to set up.
Most apps like this work in secret, and children find out. Lanternly takes the opposite view: rules that a child understands are rules that last. Try it. Switch a rule on the parent’s phone and watch the child’s phone say so, in plain words.
Choose what to block on Tendai’s phone. Tap a switch.
The parent’s phone. Tap a switch.
This phone is paired with Tendai’s profile.
Version 7
Minutes per app, each day.
Names of blocked websites, for 30 days.
Whether protection is on or off.
Messages, photos, passwords, or anything you type.
Screenshots, microphone, camera, or location.
The pages you visit.
Tendai’s phone. It changes by itself.
Use your own email. We send a six-digit code to check it is really you, so nobody else can sign up in your name.
The code works once and expires after ten minutes. It links one child’s phone to your family, and nothing else.
On their phone, in Lanternly Kids, your child sees what will be shared and agrees. Only then does protection start. If something needs switching on, the app tells you exactly what.
Pick from adult, gambling, dangerous (malware), social media, gaming and violence, and add your own sites to block or always allow. Blocking keeps working when the phone is offline and after it restarts. Where a website is blocked, the browser shows its own message and your child also sees a notice on the phone, so it never feels like a mystery.
Choose the hours when websites switch off each night. And when dinner is on the table or homework is due, pause the internet on your child’s phone for 30 minutes, an hour, two hours or any length you choose. It turns itself back on, so you never have to remember.
If your child switches the filter off, another VPN app takes over, or the phone simply goes quiet, you are told. And when Lanternly cannot be sure, it says so: “Protection was on when the phone last reported, 22 minutes ago”, not a comforting green tick. Honest status matters more to us than a tidy screen.
Minutes for each app, each day and each hour, in simple charts.
Invite your partner. You both see the same children, rules and alerts.
One family PIN, set by you, keeps the app’s settings for parents.
Both apps follow your phone, or you can choose.
Yes. It is free to download and use while we are in this early period. If that ever changes, you will be told in the app and here before it happens.
A store listing is planned but does not exist yet, so for now you download the apps from this page. Your phone will ask you to allow installs from your browser, once. Under each download you will see a long code (a checksum). It lets you confirm the file is exactly the one we published.
Yes, always. Lanternly Kids has its own icon and shows a notice while protection is running. Your child can open it any time and read every rule, and exactly what is shared with you. Before protection starts, they read a short explanation and agree. We built it this way on purpose: children who understand the rules are far more likely to accept them.
Three things from your child’s phone: how many minutes each app was used, the names of websites it blocked (with the kind of site and the time), and whether protection is switched on. It does not see what is on a page, what your child types, their messages, photos, camera, microphone or where they are. The names of blocked websites are deleted after 30 days.
Every time a phone wants to open a website, it first asks the internet for that website’s address, like looking a name up in a phone book. Lanternly sits at that step on your child’s phone. If the name is on a list you chose to block, it does not look it up and the page does not open. That is also why it never needs to read the pages themselves.
Lanternly cannot stop a determined child from removing it, and we will not pretend otherwise. What it does is tell you quickly: you see that protection is off or that the phone has gone quiet, instead of a false green tick. A family PIN, set in your app, also keeps your child out of the app’s settings.
Yes. One parent invites the other with a one-time code. Both see the same children, rules and alerts, and each has their own sign-in and notification choices.
Not yet. Lanternly works on Android phones only for now.
In the app, open Settings and choose Delete account. You can also get a copy of your information first. Or write to us and we will help.
Lanternly is made by Portrait Studio, Harare, Zimbabwe. Information is kept on secured servers; today that is in South Africa, and our privacy notice explains how we handle it as we grow.
You need two apps: Lanternly on your phone, and Lanternly Kids on your child’s phone.
We are finishing the signed version of the apps. Type your email and we will send you the download link for both apps as soon as they are ready. It is free.
A Google Play listing is planned. Until it exists, the apps come straight from this page, and we will say so here the day it changes.