Tabaa or Google Family Link for parental control?

What does each one actually offer?

Google Family Link is Google's free tool for managing a supervised Google account: approving app downloads, screen time limits, bedtime, school time, location tracking and usage reports. Tabaa is an Egyptian protection system that holds the device itself with the Device Owner privilege, the highest privilege Android grants an app, so disallowed apps are suspended at operating-system level rather than by an app watching the screen.

The difference between them is not the number of features, it is the scope over which they apply: Family Link protects an account, Tabaa protects a device. Everything you read below follows from that. And every line attributed to Google on this page is taken from Google's own help pages and its Play Store listing, reviewed on 27 August 2026.

The comparison table

Where Family Link genuinely wins

• It is completely free, and for many families that is decisive on its own.
• It is built into Android itself, so it asks for no Accessibility service and no VPN on the phone. That is a point it shares with Tabaa and that most paid parental-control apps lack.
• Creating the child's account, approving every app before it is downloaded, and store purchases are all handled in one place.
• It can block an app that is already installed, through app limits, and Google names only two exceptions: apps needed for supervision or for the device to work, and system apps, which cannot have limits set on them.
• It really is enough for a young child, where your aim is organising time and apps rather than facing attempts to get around you.

Where its limits show

The most honest description of Family Link's limits is the one Google wrote itself in its own FAQ: "Family Link does not block inappropriate content, but the settings within it give you filtering options", and then: "these filters are not perfect, so explicit or graphic content sometimes gets through that you may not want your child to see". The filtering itself is confined to "certain Google apps like Search, Chrome and YouTube", and Google adds that the child "may have access to other browsers that Family Link's Chrome settings do not apply to". We explained in why DNS blocking alone is not enough that filtering which can be switched off is, in front of a determined user, the same as no filtering at all.

Is the protection bound to an account or to the device?

This is the line that settles the whole comparison. The Family Link listing on the Play Store says that the parental controls "are only available for supervised Google accounts", and Google's help centre says it plainly: "if you add other personal profiles, your child's Family Link settings will not apply to those profiles". Google then advises parents to put a screen lock on the other profile to "help prevent your child from switching users and bypassing parental control settings". In other words, the proposed remedy is a PIN the parent sets by hand on every extra profile.

And this is less a hole in Family Link than the nature of Android itself: Android's own documentation describes an additional user as a separate environment, and says no user has access to another user's app data. Any tool that operates inside one account or one personal profile stops at that profile's edge.

Tabaa stands on the other side of that boundary. The blocking is applied by the operating system itself, so disallowed apps are suspended at system level rather than through an app watching the screen, and the policy applies under any launcher, for any user of the phone, on Wi-Fi and on mobile data, with any SIM, and whether or not anyone is signed in to a Google account. And because it is bound to the device, Tabaa never touches your accounts: there is no restriction anywhere in the product on adding, removing or switching a Google account. Sign in with as many accounts as you want; the protection will not change, and no account can switch it off.

Second space, cloned apps and private space

The most common way around any parental-control tool in Egypt is not a clever app, it is a second space. The teenager opens "Second space" on a Xiaomi phone, or "Dual apps", and gets a second copy of the same app outside everything the parent configured. Tabaa closes that door with three separate locks, all on by default:

• The work profile is locked on every supported Android version.
• Cloned apps and private space are locked on Android 15 and newer, because Android itself did not provide those two restrictions before that release.
• Second space is really an extra Android user, so it is covered by the lock on adding, removing and switching users, which works on every version.

And we will state the limit plainly rather than promise you something we cannot guarantee: on Android 9 to 14 there is no dedicated system restriction for app cloning, so a manufacturer's "Dual apps" feature is covered on those versions only to the extent that the manufacturer implements it as an extra user. On Android 15 the lock is direct and explicit. Google's published documentation, by contrast, does not describe any control over these features: Family Link's stated scope is Google accounts, apps, screen time, Chrome, Search, YouTube and the store.

Filtering inside the browsers embedded in apps

Porn is not opened only in a browser any more. It is opened in a page that loads inside a chat app, in a browser embedded in a game, and in an ad that opens a window inside the app itself. The mechanism Tabaa uses is the proof here: it pins the phone to Private DNS over DNS-over-TLS on Tabaa's server, at operating-system level, then locks the setting so it cannot be edited, and re-asserts it every three seconds. The result is that every DNS query on the device passes through the filter: the browser, the WebView embedded inside an app, and apps running in the background. No app has to integrate with Tabaa to be filtered, and there is no VPN on the phone intercepting your traffic.

And we are not telling you that getting around it is impossible. This mechanism needs Android 9 or newer, because older versions have no Private DNS in the system at all, and an app carrying a hard-wired DNS-over-HTTPS resolver inside it can bypass the filter. That is why a second level sits underneath: 47 VPN, proxy and DNS-changer packages blocked in every mode and suspended even when already installed, the VPN setting itself locked, and a hard floor of 118 porn domains that not even the supervisor can lift.

Where Tabaa wins on the rest of the detail

• Removal: the phone's user cannot delete Tabaa, force stop it or clear its data, because the system itself removes the Force stop and Clear data buttons. The blocking survives a reboot, it survives the app being killed, and it survives with no internet at all because the policy is stored on the device. Removal is only through a factory reset whose key is with the supervisor, and a reset from recovery mode is deliberately left available so that no device is ever bricked.
• Speed: a blocked app closes in about a third of a second, and any change the supervisor makes reaches the phone in about three seconds, or instantly when the silent push arrives. If the app was open at the moment it was blocked, it closes at that moment, not on the next round.
• Modes: four modes in a fixed order of priority - strict focus, then sleep, then study, then normal. Strict focus is a full-screen countdown during which nothing opens, not even calls, held in place by the system's own lock; it survives a reboot and needs no internet because its end time is stored on the device. The clock is pinned to network time automatically whenever any mode is active, so moving the clock forward does not skip a window.
• Permissions: Tabaa uses no Accessibility service, no notification reader and no VPN on the phone, and asks for no camera, no microphone, no SMS, no contacts and no files.
• Location: the live location and a short recent trail appear on a map inside the supervisor app, and the permission is granted by system policy with no prompt the child can refuse. Tabaa deliberately does not request background location, so the phone is not followed around by an "your organisation can access your location" notification.
• Curated defaults: the device starts with a ready-made list of 32 phone apps blocked by default, 11 of them unofficial Telegram forks, because blocking the official app is meaningless if a modified build gets through. The supervisor can lift any item for their own device alone.
• The computer: Google says non-Chromebook computers cannot be supervised through Family Link. Tabaa has a standalone Windows program at 100 EGP/month or 1,000 EGP/year.
• When the subscription ends: the device is not unlinked, not wiped and not held hostage. It moves to a read-only default state with the core locks and the porn filtering still running.
• Updates: Tabaa updates itself on the phone with no step from anyone and without going through a store, so an improvement to the protection reaches every device as fast as a settings change does.

The privilege is granted once, through the QR code on the installation page, on a factory-reset device, so take a backup first and read the guide on installing without losing your data. And for an adult who wants to bind themselves, the supervisor's role can be played by a relative or a friend, as in the guide on making a friend your supervisor, or by the Tabaa team itself. See the pricing, the full comparison of the apps, or the guide to parental control in Egypt.