I wrote an article on Medium on how to use /e/OS and customize it for kids. I explain how to fully uninstall preinstalled apps using ADB without root and share scripts to automate this. Tested on a Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro, the result is a clean, distraction-free phone tailored for safe kid use.
Looking forward anyone that could have good advices to limit the access to preferences or at least some categories. The parental control partially does that but I would really like to lock it (without losing USB debugging access in case something goes wrong).
Looks good, I’ve flown over it on my way to bed, so I might have missed something which was already mentioned, but:
Regarding limiting access to settings and other system packages, there would probably be the way to not delete, but rename it from *.apk to *.a?k or comparable.
Maybe there’s a way to set up a simple fastboot / adb script (manual renaming again would probably work, but demand more work) or a scripting app which starts automatically on startup and allows by specific interaction to rename the .a?k back.
Another way would probably work acceptably by using the “allowing multiple profiles” option under settings - system - “multiple profiles” with “guest” profile (or create one named “kids”) which ist separately (without) password protected, while yours is unknown to the children.
Could as example be combined with an app or feature separately set up or installed without any renaming/deleting of the system packages for “settings” etc. - which simply hides those from the launcher in that profile.
From what I’ve seen (but I didn’t use the parental controls application, so those are guesses based on comparable solutions in other devices / usecases) this in combination with parental control would be quite secure against the kids without need to delete important settings packages etc.
So far my ideas. Feel free to try them or add them to your tutorial, if you want.
Thanks for your feedback(s). I never played with fastboot scripts, this sounds interesting and maybe a good way to boot into an “admin mode”. Gonna look at this someday.
I fixed the duplicated entries in the script, good catch!
Spanish version: yes feel free!
I noticed the parental control of /e/OS has the same issue as the others like Google Family Link on the Xiaomi. It seems it is unable to track the time spent into the apps. Even if I set 1h as max time, it will still be open after these 60 minutes. Weird, must be something special with this particular model/hardware.
hello again!
I reread the article and it made me think a lot.
I think we need an approach that goes that way. Moreover, it would be very interesting that there is a ROM or distribution of android already prepared for children. I haven’t tried the parental controls (our daughter is still in her mother’s womb ) but I don’t think that’s enough.
We need more awareness about the harm of algorithms to our children. Have you ever looked at the amount of trackers that any random Android game has? Not to mention YouTube, even if there are youtube kids and parental controls, the fact of the autoplaying of the videos and the algorithm that takes them to a loop of very controversial content, makes leaving them with that kind of applications very problematic.
Anyway, thanks for the post, it motivates me to make a translation of it and to think about other things
Oh, it wasn’t meant as a fastboot script to boot into “admin mode”, but if you have a device with as example two slots, you could have the same OS installed on both and one technically locked down, while the other offers all functionality.
But some kids might even be clever enough to get into the fastboot/recovery menus and play around via ADB, there’s always a risk that they find a possibility to do what they want with the device.
This is definitely what I was looking for, a distro for kids and I found absolutely nothing! In fact it’s ChatGPT that pointed me towards /e/OS as I needed to avoid all the Google stuff as a prerequisites but also good support for older models that are typically recycled by the parents and given to kids
Yep Android games are full of trackers. LuckyPatch is a good way to remove most of the annoyance and get a cleaner .apk but it goes against all licensing of the app creators… I won’t be able to fix the gaming ssue, the internal chats in those games are extremely difficult to control. Well it’s nearly impossible in practice, unless you monitor traffic… if you can decrypt it…
Youtube is a problem on its own, my kid is 10 and Youtube Kids is too “baby” for him, he wants to see videos that are targeting an older audience, basically this is the same audience as those that are 16 years old, or even older and are playing Brawl Stars and most games that are popular at school.
For ADB, yes if the kid manages to figure this out, game is over and there’s nothing I can do. I excluded this from my threat model lol
I keep thinking about this, and we were even talking about it in the cybercirujas community.
It would be interesting to build a rom with other applications installed, such as NewPipe, RiMusic and similar, which allow access to the Youtube catalog but without user login.
Also that trimming you do with adb, see what other services to cut. I’m sure here on the forum, other community members would probably be interested in doing something like that. I have no technical knowledge but I am very interested in the idea
Hopefully something will come of it. You are welcome to contribute as well. The cybercirujas forum is in spanish but luckily there are online translators, like the one that helps me to write
) but I don’t think that’s enough.
