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Download it from Google Play. Rooting the phone, connecting it to a computer and turning on developer mode are all unnecessary. If you can change a setting in Instagram, you can go straight through this.

Four digits or more. Every setting change sits behind this parent PIN from then on.

Right after you choose it, register either an authenticator app or the secret questions. That is how you reset the PIN yourself if it ever slips your mind. You can also register them later, from the settings screen inside the app.

Please keep the authenticator on a separate device that your child does not use, or in a password manager — on the restricted device itself, your child could read the code.

Your apps appear in a list, and you flip the toggles. There are two ways to choose, and both are on the same screen.

Screens that are not apps — the list of recently used apps, the settings screen — are turned on and off from the same place.

You need one calendar for your child that you, the parent, can write to. There are two ways to get there, and both work the same afterwards.

Way 1 — let the app do it

1. On your child's phone, open Live Lock and go to Switch from anywhere, then Create and share a calendar.
2. Choose the Google account on that phone.
3. Enter your own email address and continue through Google's permission screen.
4. Open the invitation that arrives in your inbox and add the calendar.
5. Back on your child's phone, continue with Use this calendar.

Closing the screen part-way is fine — you can pick it up where you left off. On versions without this button, use way 2 below. Some accounts need a guardian's permission through Google.

Way 2 — create it yourself

1. Using your child's account, create a dedicated calendar in Google Calendar.
2. Share it with your own email address, with permission to make changes to events.
3. Open the invitation that arrives in your inbox and add the calendar.

Look up the current steps for creating and sharing ↗

An even shorter way. Instead of a dedicated calendar, simply share your child's main calendar with yourself with permission to make changes. That works too.

If you would rather own the calendar yourself (optional), change the owner to your own account in Google Calendar's settings, accept the transfer, then lower your child's permission to "See all event details". The search above covers those steps as well.

1. Open Switch from anywhere in Live Lock and choose the calendar you prepared.
2. If you are asked to confirm an account, choose the one that calendar belongs to.
3. A list of control names appears — the names you write on the calendar. Tap one to copy it.

That list is the shared language between your calendar and the phone. Copying a name from it is the surest way to get an event to land.

The name of the event becomes the name of the mode. Copying the name from the list on your child's phone is the surest way. An all-day event covers the whole day.

• Events do not need to overlap. When they do, the most recently arrived event wins.
• Outside the events, the phone goes back to its everyday setting.
• Out of signal, it keeps running on the last events it received.
• Changes can take a few minutes to arrive. When you are in a hurry, press Fetch events on your child's phone.
• On your child's phone, put Google Calendar — and any browser that can edit events — on the blocked list.
• With more than one child, give each of them their own calendar.

Pick your own calendar, and your own events rebuild your own phone habits.

• Building a language habit — the browser and social apps close for that stretch. Notifications still arrive.
• While you sleep — one more privacy lock, app by app.
• The "just checking" hours — put no-phone time on the calendar, every day.

If you registered an authenticator app right after choosing the parent PIN, this is the shortest path.

• Choose Forgot the PIN on the PIN screen.
• Enter the six digit code shown in your authenticator app. The code changes every 30 seconds.
• Set a new parent PIN. Your block settings, schedules and temporary changes are kept.

Please keep the authenticator on a separate device that your child does not use, or in a password manager — on the restricted device itself, your child could read the code.

This is the path if you prefer not to use an authenticator app. Answer all three questions you wrote yourself, and you can set a new parent PIN.

• Choose Forgot the PIN on the PIN screen, then choose the secret questions.
• Enter your three answers. Upper and lower case and surrounding spaces are ignored.
• After repeated wrong answers, the wait before the next attempt grows longer, so please try again after a while.

If neither an authenticator app nor the secret questions were registered, we have no way to tell you the parent PIN. In that case, start the device in safe mode and remove Live Lock. Live Lock does not run in safe mode, so the settings screen and the removal work as usual.

• Press and hold the power button, then press and hold Power off.
• When asked to reboot to safe mode, accept.
• After the restart, remove Live Lock from the app list in Settings.
• Power the device off and on again to leave safe mode.

The names and the order of these steps differ between devices, so please also check the manual or your device maker's guidance. Removing the app clears the block settings.