HomeFor parents
This is not parental-control software.
Spark is opt-in self-restraint, not parental control: whoever holds the key can unlock the phone, so a child who does not want the limit will defeat it in an afternoon. If you need a limit your child cannot remove, use Apple's Family Sharing or Google's Family Link — both free, both built by the platform, and you hold the passcode.
The free tools you already have are the right ones
Screen Time’s well-known weakness — that the person being restrained holds the passcode — disappears entirely under Family Sharing, because the passcode lives on your device instead of theirs. The same is true of Family Link on Android. For a device you are responsible for, that is the correct architecture, and no third-party product improves on it. Ours certainly does not: the whole design assumes the person holding the key is the person who wanted the limit.
On iOS, Downtime does very little until Block at Downtime is switched on — without it the limit is a prompt that can be dismissed, which is not a limit. And Always Allowed is where you keep the things that must work regardless: Phone, Messages, Maps. Getting those two right is worth more than anything you can buy.
What a key can and cannot do
Three of these four answers are “no”. That is not modesty — it is the actual specification of an opt-in tool, and a page that lets you hear a maybe on any of them has sold you the wrong thing.
| What you might want | What Spark actually does |
|---|---|
| A limit they cannot remove | No. Whoever holds the key can unlock the phone. If your child does not want the limit, the limit does not exist — hand them the key and it is gone. |
| Stop them installing or reinstalling apps | No. That is an account-level control, and it belongs to Apple and Google. Spark blocks apps on a phone during a session its owner started. |
| See what they use, or where they are | No. There is no dashboard, no reporting and nothing sent to us. Sessions and block lists stay on the phone, which is also why we could not tell you even if you asked. |
| Support a limit they chose themselves | Yes, and this is the only thing on the list we are any good at. A cost they agreed to in advance, in a form their future self cannot argue with. |
When they want it, not when you want it for them
There is a specific moment when this product becomes useful in a household: the teenager who has decided, on their own, that their phone is beating them during revision. At that point a control you impose is still resented, but a cost they chose is not — and the difference in whether it survives the month is enormous.
The setup that works is boring. They pick the apps. They pick the hours. You agree together where the key lives during those hours — a kitchen drawer, a shelf in the hall, far enough that their phone cannot find it over Bluetooth from their desk. Then you stay out of it, because the moment enforcement becomes your job, the tool has changed category and stopped working.
It also works the other way round, and this is the version we would recommend first: a parent who wants to be present in the evening, using it on their own phone, visibly. That is not a lecture, it does not require anyone to agree to anything, and it is the only version of this that costs a teenager nothing to ignore and still changes the room.
Blocking the phone while revising
What to block, what to keep, and why handing the key to somebody else works better than another room.
Read the setupSleepGetting the phone out of the bedroom
The block most households need most, and the alarm-clock problem that quietly defeats it.
Read the setupFamily timeBeing present, not just in the room
Why a phone face-down on the table still costs the conversation something.
Read the setupWhat is actually established, and what is not
We have shipped nothing and measured nothing, so there is no Spark data on this page and there are no household outcome figures anywhere on this site. What does exist is other people’s published work on phones and attention: the cost of an interruption, the attention a phone consumes simply by being visible, what a conversation loses when one sits on the table, and what light-emitting screens do to sleep onset. All four are on the research page, quoted as their authors stated them and linked to the original papers.
None of that research is about our product, and none of it says a key fixes anything. It is the reason we think the problem is real. Whether an object in a drawer helps your household is a question you should answer with a fortnight of trying it, not with a statistic — and the app is free, so the fortnight costs nothing.
The ones parents actually ask
Can I use Spark as parental control for my child's phone?
Not really, and we would rather say so. Spark is opt-in: whoever has the key can unlock the phone. If your goal is a control your child cannot remove, use Apple's Family Sharing or Google's Family Link — you hold the passcode, which is exactly the property you need and exactly the property we do not provide.
So what is it good for with a teenager?
An agreement they entered into. A teenager who wants to revise without their phone winning, and who agrees where the key lives during study hours, gets something Family Link cannot give them: a limit that is theirs rather than imposed, with a cost they chose in advance.
What should I use to actually restrict a child's phone?
On iPhone, Screen Time under Family Sharing: you set the passcode from your own device and approve requests from there. On Android, Family Link. Both are free, both are built by the platform vendor, and both are more appropriate than any third-party tool for a device you are responsible for.
My teenager keeps uninstalling the blocker I installed. What now?
That is the signal that the tool is the wrong shape for the situation. A blocker installed against somebody's will becomes a game of removal, and they will win it on their own device. Either move to platform-level parental controls, where the passcode is genuinely yours, or move to an agreement they actually want, where the tool works because they want it to.
Does a phone in the bedroom really matter?
The clearest published evidence concerns evening screen light: reading on a light-emitting device before bed suppressed melatonin, pushed the circadian clock later, delayed sleep onset and reduced next-morning alertness compared with print. That study is linked in full on our research page. An overnight charging spot outside the bedroom is the cheapest change a household can make, and it needs no product at all.
Still deciding whether a physical key is the right shape at all? Compare Spark with the alternatives, including the built-in tools — several of them are the better answer for some households, and the comparison pages say which.
The most persuasive thing in a house is a parent doing it.
Locking is free and takes one tap. Unlocking needs the key, which is wherever you left it — usually the drawer in the kitchen, at six o'clock. The app costs nothing; the key is the one-time buy.