Bark App Review 2025: Is It Legit? Is It a Scam?

Bark App Review Summary

In order to protect the people you love most, you will go to any lengths.

A security system and a dog are both sensible solutions to protect your home and family in the real world.

In addition, identical answers can be found on your smartphone in the digital realm.

Bark is the name of this app. The company behind the parental control software began its work in 2015 with the goal of empowering parents to teach their children responsibly in the modern digital world.

The Bark app is a parental control app that helps you keep tabs on what your kids are watching online, limit their time spent in front of the screen, and restrict inappropriate information.

This Bark app review will discuss the app’s functions, advantages and disadvantages, and overall impression.

In What Ways Does Bark Help?

The Bark app is a parental control tool that uses cutting-edge machine learning and statistical analysis to keep your kids safe as they use their mobile devices.

You may keep tabs on your kid’s smartphone or other electronic device using cutting-edge technology developed in tandem with recognized authorities in the fields of child psychology, child protection, and educational technology.

With the top Bark features being content surveillance, screen timescales and administration, and site blocking, parents may have peace of mind knowing that they have complete control over their child’s device.

The Bark app is user-friendly for parents and works across all devices children may use, sending notifications and alarms as necessary.

It works with Apple and Google gadgets, as well as Kindle Fires and Chromebooks from Amazon.

How To Set Up Bark

The Bark app can be downloaded and set up relatively easily on iOS and Android smartphones.

The Android app’s settings can be adjusted without needing a personal computer or external hardware.

A personal computer (PC or Mac) is required in order to set up an iOS device such as an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch for the first time.

The actual installation and configuration steps are as follows:

Register for an account on the Bark website (there’s a free trial available) and get the “parent” app for your smartphone and the “children'” app for your children’s devices.

Pick and choose which online resources your kid should have access to through the Bark app. E-mail and dozens of popular social networks and other Internet-enabled apps are included.

When the Bark app detects something suspicious, it can send you an e-mail or text message alert based on your chosen settings and apps.

The app does not provide you complete access to your kid’s phone or other device’s logs and information.

Instead, it uses secret machine-learning algorithms to keep an eye out for trouble and bark warnings at you like a guard dog (thus the name and logo).

Bark Features

The Bark mobile app boasts some nifty extras, such as:

Screen Time Management

To limit your children’s exposure to inappropriate content online, you can use Bark.

Many reviews of the Bark app highlight this function as a total disaster, particularly among parents of smaller children.

The app’s functionality for monitoring screen time is not comprehensive. You can set time limits for web access using cellular data or WiFi.

A web filter can be set up to prevent inappropriate content from being viewed on a child’s device.

Filtering your internet access allows you to prevent access to certain websites or categories of sites. You can restrict access to things like adult websites, casinos, and video games.

In addition to all of these features, screen time management also claims to allow you to set specific times for when your children should be asleep and when they should be in school throughout the week and on the weekend.

Kids can have their own designated social media attention during “free time,” which can be scheduled on the calendar.

Content Filters

Currently, Bark claims that it keeps an eye on 32 programs, games, e-mail servers, and browsers, including popular ones like Fb, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

But the users have said You will be notified immediately whenever any of your child’s content or behavior is deemed inappropriate.

Even just an emoji of a beer cup sent in a text message can trigger an alarm with the Bark parental control program.

If your youngster writes their buddies, “I’m terribly depressed,” for example, you’ll know about it.

Bark is capable of this because of the usage of contextual information and natural language processing via its algorithms and computational intelligence techniques.

More than a dozen types of sensitivities exist, such as

• Violence
• Depression
• The Spread of Hate Messages
• Drugs/alcohol
• Material that is sexually explicit

In your account preferences, you can mark “all” of the information in those sections or “none” of the content in those sections.

When using a browser like Chrome, Firefox, or Microsoft Edge, Bark can even see what you’re doing in private mode.

In any case, your mileage may vary depending on the gadget you use. The iOS browser Chrome is the only one Bark checks for activity.

Bark can obstruct not only e-mail and social media but also websites and search phrases. In particular, we discovered that e-mail monitoring was effective.

Bark checks both outgoing and incoming e-mails, as well as any attached files. On the parent dashboard, you’ll have rapid access to all the information marked as inappropriate.

Requests for Check-In from Children

While Bark does not have GPS capabilities, it makes up for it with a reliable check-in system. Options are available so that kids can do their own check-ins.

The two of you can communicate via check-in requests.

To check quickly, go to your phone’s dashboard and select the check option from the menu. Your kid’s device will be visible to you from that location.

Next, you can ask for a check-in, making it easy for your children to report in promptly from any location.

And the greatest part is that you can find it on Google Maps! Therefore, it can be useful, as it indicates where to go when the pickup time has arrived.

Customizable Sensitivity Setting

The fact that you don’t have to monitor your child’s every move on Bark by reading their messages, listening to their every music, or watching their every video is a major plus in our book.

Your child’s access to the internet is tracked, filtered, flagged, and reported. The notice explains why the material was highlighted.

There are three different levels of alert sensitivity. When no threshold is set, you will receive alerts for virtually everything.

For instance, a child may have written an e-mail depicting a glass of wine, which would cause the app to flag the message as potentially having alcohol.

Since you can customize the app’s monitoring intensity to your needs, you’ll only receive as many alerts as you’ve set your preferences for.

Social Media Monitoring

As expected, Bark’s not strongest suit is its capacity to keep tabs on a wide variety of social media profiles.

While Bark does a good job of covering the most popular social media platforms, such as Fb, Insta, Twitter, and Snapchat, its coverage is far from exhaustive.

The entire list is too big to reproduce here, but Bark has it in its user manuals.

This includes the most popular messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger and lesser-known ones like Reddit and Discord.

Parents must first access their child’s account when they want Bark to begin monitoring their child’s social media activity.

But nothing is stopping them from creating a new account under an e-mail address that Bark won’t recognize.

But Bark also alerts parents if there’s a big drop in social media activity so that their children can’t hide their accounts from them.

Bark App Limitations

Minimal Personalization Option

Bark’s primary limitation is that it can only detect extremely strong obscenities. Despite a profanity filter, your only control is whether to use it or not.

Since Bark allows parents to keep tabs on everything or nothing, it’s up to them to actively seek out and keep an eye on anything that might threaten their children.

Likewise, unacceptable actions, illegal material, and resistance to reform are all similar to merit treatment.

Ambiguous End Of The Trial Package

Even for the trial period, Bark requests credit card information and displays the number of days left in your trial on a dashboard.

Cancelling, however, is not easy to grasp. There is no indication of when the subscription will expire or if you will be paid for the service.

No Location History Tracking & Geofencing Features

Bark provides parents who are concerned about their children’s exposure to social media threats with a dashboard that displays social media notifications.

But Bark isn’t the ideal option for parents who want to monitor their children’s whereabouts or activity in real-time because it relies solely on check-ins to find children rather than providing a real-time family finder.

Can’t Block Dangerous Apps Or Check App Activity

Bark’s early warning system for potentially dangerous social media posts is limited to time constraints for applications and websites.

It means that parents will never be able to fully protect their children from internet threats by blocking access to harmful websites or applications.

It can only assist parents in identifying the issues but not in fixing them.

Plans And Pricing

To secure an unlimited number of devices, the Bark Premium plan costs $14 per month or $99 per year.

Bark also has a free app called Bark Junior, which contains basic parental controls, including content filtering, app management, screen time limitations, and location monitoring, but costs $5 per month or $49 per year.

There are also some Bark app coupons available to you as well.

If you sign up and cancel during the first week, you won’t be charged for Bark, giving you a chance to see if it’s right for you.

Review Verdict

This Bark app review has discussed the features of the app and the basic procedures of setting it up.

Having an open and frank discussion about internet safety for children with all members of your family is essential.

To keep your child safe online, you should teach them how to do so in a way that doesn’t include blocking sites or limiting their social media use.