Devices

What it runs on

The target is the tablet a family actually buys — roughly $80 to $350 — not a school fleet. Below is where each one stands, including the ones with a catch.

Tablets

FamilyStatusWhat to know
Amazon Fire HD 8 / 10 / Max 11
2022 and newer, incl. Kids editions
Supported, with a catchRemoving the Amazon account is required, and it also removes the Appstore. Read this first.
Samsung Galaxy Tab A
and current Tab series
Supported, with a catchSamsung's Auto Blocker sits in front of setup and you must switch it off by hand first — supervision cannot do it for you.
Lenovo Tab M / Idea TabSupportedClose to stock Android. Lenovo Family Mode is a competing supervisor; turn it off.
Walmart onn.SupportedStock Android behaviour, no special handling needed.
Redmi Pad SE, TCL TabExpected to workCovered by the common engine. Not yet exercised on our own hardware.
Nokia / HMDExpected to workClean Android, small volume.

"Expected to work" is not "verified". It means the device ships close enough to stock Android that our common engine covers it, and nothing about it is known to be in the way. When we have run it on the hardware in our hands, this table will say so and not before.

The Amazon Fire catch, in full

Android will not grant supervision while an account is signed in, so the Amazon account has to be deregistered. On a Fire, deregistering also disables the Amazon Appstore — and on a Fire that is the only app store there is. There is no Play Store to fall back on.

What that means for you: install every app your child needs before you deregister and run setup. Choosing apps becomes a setup-time decision on a Fire rather than something changed later.

For a locked-down tablet for a six-year-old — which is what most Fire Kids tablets are — that is usually fine. For an older child who installs things themselves, a Samsung or Lenovo is the better buy, because Play keeps working there.

Open question we have not closed. Whether signing back into Amazon after setup keeps supervision intact is not yet verified on our hardware. If it does, the Fire story gets considerably better. We are not going to claim it until we have watched it happen.

Computers

Windows 10 and 11

Needs administrator rights once. Installs a service, a filtering resolver on loopback, network filter rules, browser policy and execution blocks — with the uninstaller put in place first.

macOS

Needs an administrator password once. Installs a privileged helper and a filtering resolver, and verifies each step rather than assuming it took.

Not supported, on purpose

  • A child's iPhone or iPad, as a supervised device. Apple grants no third party the equivalent of Android's Device Owner, so nothing we shipped could actually hold. This is about the child's device only — see below.
  • Huawei — no Google services, and the supervision path depends on them.
  • Kindle e-readers — not Android tablets in the sense that matters here.
  • Fire 7, Fire HD 10 7th generation (2017), Fire OS 5 and 6 — too old for the APIs this relies on.
  • Unbranded tablets from marketplace sellers. Their firmware varies from unit to unit and we cannot make a claim that holds.

If you have an iPhone, this is still for you

The line above is about the device your child uses. The device you use is a different question, and the answer is any of them.

You manage everything from a browser — apps, sites, daily limits, schedules, requests, and the remote lock — and the dashboard is built for a phone held in one hand rather than a desktop that was later squeezed down. An iPhone is a first-class parent device today.

What an iPhone cannot be is the supervised one. If your child's device is an iPhone, FrameBright has nothing honest to offer for it, and we would rather say that here than sell you a subscription and explain it afterwards.