Lock Mode for Gabb Phone
Comments
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This feature is a MUST! The feature needs to shut down calling and texting at a time set by the parent. If you could just have the phone locked at the time set and the child cannot use any of the features until the parental control is shut off that would be great!
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This is frustrating! I just signed up for a new contract & assumed this was a feature for the phone as well. This is shocking for GABB to not have on their phones for kids.
Features needed: Ability to set times throughout the day for no phone access: school time, bedtime & to be able to limit total amount of time on phone for the day. No parent wants to worry about having to round up phones every night.
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My 2nd comment on this thread - I don’t see this feature happening in the next month so our first month will be our last on the Gabb phone. The web site shows “focus mode” but does not indicate that it only exists for the watch. We have one of the other phones & had used it successfully - other than a safe music streaming service. Well what good is a music service if I just had to go into his room & tell him to turn off the music at 1am. I am sure Gabb will reply with how I should have a basket & collect his phone at night. Well, get some real parental controls on your phone - please. Look at all these posts. No one can be happy with no ability to lock down.
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Hello all!
Thank you for your continual feedback on this post. We thank you for adding your voice to this highly requested feature idea. We are thankful to each comment and vote as it has shown us the need and desire for this feature. We're always exploring new ways to enhance your experience and empower you to work smarter. We are particularly excited about a Focus Mode feature, designed to help you minimize distractions and stay laser-focused on your child's most important tasks.
While it’s still in the early stages, we wanted to share this vision with you and invite your continual feedback. Your insights are invaluable in shaping the tools and features that truly make a difference in your workflow. As always, thank you for being a part of our journey. We’ll keep you updated as things develop!
-Gabb Product Team
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I would like an immediate update on when the “focus time” feature will be up and running. Not only had I wrongly assumed this was already a function and find out my kid has been texting all night, I have, as a teacher, been recommending this phone to my class parents for years. Besides needing to sleep at night, many schools rightly require students to shut down phones during school hours and turn them in. Parents should be able to set these hours so children are not interrupted at school. Please message me directly with an update or I will be canceling my plan at the end of the month and recommending all parents at my school do the same. An iPhone has better parental controls available.
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At a minimum, this should be like the watch where you can limit use to emergency calls or calls/texts to the plan admin/priority contact based on a schedule. A "nice to have" feature would be the ability to set a schedule for each app individually.
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I am highly disappointed that there is no lock for phone usage. I thought this was a feature with the focus option but it dont work on the phones. Why is this feature not added for the phone we should be able to lock our kids phones.
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Add another parent to the list. I just got the 4 pro as an upgrade to the watch. I can’t believe that this isn’t a feature on the watch. Now I am making my child charge her phone in my room each night. This is a huge oversight.
I would like just an overall phone lock mode between hours of my choosing. Sure, it would be nice to allow a few apps (such as Libby) at all times, but this is an urgent need for parents so keep it simple to start with if you have to.
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We just bought the Gabb phone for our sons and expected this to be a feature as well. I would like to be able to lock the phone at night and during school hours.
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Shocked and disappointed that my son's new phone does not have this critical feature. If it's on the watch, why isn't it on the phone?
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Truly surprised to find that my son’s ipad is more restrictive on app and screen time limits than the gabb phone that I just bought for him. Even more frustrated to find out that this feature has been requested for at least 6 months. This does need to be fixed or we will likely not be gabb customers in the future.
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Yes!!! We need a Focus Mode ASAP. Please prioritize this feature. Parents need control to help our kids successfully transition into the tech world safely.
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Please add the lock feature under parental controls. Our son needs time away from the phone and this is the reaain we chise Gabb. When can this feature be added.
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Does the Gabb phone 4 pro not have the option to set down times? I can’t find it anywhere with the Gabb parent app. I have seen discussions on setting this for the Gabb watches but not the phone. Both android and iPhone parental controls have the ability to limit when a child can use apps on a schedule. This allows scheduling for when children are in school or at bed time, without having to manually disable/enable apps each time.
Am I just not seeing this somewhere? Or was this really not thought of when creating the parental controls?
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Desperately need the lock mode!!
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focus mode has yet to be implemented. How can an iPhone have a stronger lock/ parental feature than a GABB? I hope this is an immediate feature update on your forefront.
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I’m adding my name to the list of parents requesting more control over screen time on their child’s device. I am shocked there is no parental control for this and that this discussion has been happening for over six months and it’s still in the “early stages” of development. I definitely want to downgrade my plan to limited apps until this is figured out.
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To answer your questions on the features being requested:
- Lock Mode on specific apps? YES
- Lock Mode to all apps at once? YES
- Lock Mode to certain feature on the phone at scheduled times of the day? YES
I have all of these options on my older sons iPhone. I can set his screen time limits for specific apps and schedule downtime for his phone as a whole. However, even while on downtime I can allow specific apps to always be available or specific contacts so he could still text a parent and yet not have access to text friends.
I also want to be able to see the data of how much time he is spending on each app and on his phone in general. It has been so completely frustrating to constantly ask his to put it away or take it away because I can't set his app time limits. I'm okay with him playing a few games or dulingo, but setting boundaries for a 14 year old is important and I have no way of doing that other than to completely remove the device. This seems counter productive for trying to train him on proper phone usage. It's now January and this thread was started in June. Where's the update or progress in fixing this major issue?
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GABB!!! Seriously, it is ridiculous that the lock/focus/school mode fearure hasn't been added yet. If you can do it on the watch, you can figure it out on the phone. Just make it happen!
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I just want to add my voice to the wish that the Gabbpro4 phone had the same option that the watch did for us where we were able to shut the phones usage off for the night. Kids need sleep at night and it’s difficult to always remember to have my son turn in his phone at night. It was so nice when I didn’t have to think twice about it. At bedtime the phone just was off and he could focus on getting to bed, not receiving text or calls at any hour of the night. This needs to change! Makes me regret upgrading his watch to this new phone. Had I realized this I wouldn’t have upgraded.
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Please add a way that I can control my daughter's access to her phone at certain times and days of the week. It's unbelievable you thought to limit apps and internet, but still allow them to text and call all times of the night unless I take her phone away.
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@ReaganKowal there are dozens of parent comments for a lock mode / focus mode / quiet time mode now & there has been nothing for a year - please provide an update if this capability will be released in the next 30 to 60 days. If not, we need to move the bark phone. You have to be able to turn off certain apps when needed. Turn off messaging if that is a problem or distraction. Turn off phone except for emergency numbers if that is causing an issue. Turn off entertainment apps as needed. Please provide an update. Thank you.
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Hi @91BlueDad and all,
Thank you for your comments on this post. Our team has seen and heard each one of your comments. We understand the importance of this desired feature and are doing everything in our power to release this feature.
At this time, we still do not have a date of when this will be available for our Gabb Phones. We can assure you that we hear you and the feature is being worked on.
Please continue to comment and vote on this post to help our team understand the desire for this feature. Thank you for your help in making Gabb better each day!
-Reagan
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Struggling to enforce limitations on my child's texting when it is "high" while still having ability to communicate with us (instead of taking it away altogether). When I searched to try to see if there is a way to set limits on texting, I see the focus mode for watches which would be perfect the perfect solution, but we have the phone. The option to automatically switch to focus mode when they hit a certain amount of call/text time, like the old days before unlimited talk and text would be perfect too.
Edit since this was moved to a thread. It has been 6 months, and no movement on this, when clearly Gabb has the tech already applied to the watches?! We use Gabb for the security and control despite the cost (an iPhone would be free on our account). How can you set alerts on excessive texting without a way to lock it down?! Please advise a launch date for this feature… unknown isnt really an answer at this point. I tell my 13 year old that "i dont know" isnt an answer, same applies here.
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Absolutely agree with everyone. We need the EXACT SAME features of quiet times/focus time as the watch. Ridiculous that this phone doesn’t have it when my kids iPads do have it. Need ASAP or we are leaving Gabb.
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We need this feature ASAP. As in your programmers shouldn’t be working on anything other than this. You guys are remarkably close to a false advertising lawsuit.
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I totally Agree!! Just updated from gabb watch and was unaware of lack of focus time! Came to search if it was possible to do and stumbled on this thread! Interested in the update ASAP!!
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Add me to the growing list of parents waiting on this critical feature. I won't be waiting much longer
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I agree with all the comments above. This is ridiculous. If you can’t add this feature, please let us out of our contract so we can get a device with better parental controls.
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I just came here searching for how to set time limits on my son's phone. We just upgraded him from the basic Gabb phone to the 4 Plus and now that he has more apps, he's on his phone more and I want to set healthy limits. Our older daughter's iPhone has great time limits with control over what apps she can use and when. I am disappointed that my son's "safer" phone does not have this. If this isn't added I may just move him to an iPhone in the near future. What a shame that I would need to do that to move away from the supposedly safer, healthier phone.
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I honestly couldn't be more disapointed that this isn't a feature. I've asked to have "our pact" added - and was denied. I got a GABB phone because I thought the parent controls were spot on. It is nonsense to say that GABBs are so great they don't need parent controls - I need to be able to see what and who she is texting, what she is doing, and most of all, I need to be able to set time limits. I feel very disappointed, let down, and mis-guided that this is not a feature available.
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Just bought the Gabb Phone 4 Pro for a kid that has had struggles with the freedom of her other phone. I needed something with less freedom and more parental control. This fits the bill for the most part, but missing the lock down feature is a pretty large oversight. I can do that on my other daughters iPhone and on another one of my kids family app in Google. I was just searching to try and figure out this feature, so seeing it’s not a thing is pretty disheartening.
Apple and Android’s implementation is they could always call us, but everything else shut down at a specified time. I get that is less necessary with the absence of Disney and Netflix on the phone, but it would still be really nice to have to ensure a good sleep in school nights. I can get around this by taking the phone at night, but would still be nice to have.
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Just another parent, shocked and frustrated that this feature isn't available, this is so obviously necessary. Get on it Gabb, or we all might as well just give them the locked down iphones.
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We upgraded to the Pro for Christmas and are regretting it very much. The lack of time limits, lockdown features is a MAJOR problem. Please make this a priority or we are going to have to take this phone away. We chose Gabb because he struggles with self-control regarding technological devices. Please make this happen ASAP! Very frustrated especially after seeing how many parents have been asking for this!
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Just adding my name to this feature request. We are holding off on upgrading our Gabb Watch 3's to Gabb Phone's because it does not have a Focus mode like the watch does ( no apps and only allow calls and text to Parents / Guardians ). Please let me know when this feature is released so I can make the switch.
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Is there an update on when the lock/focus feature will be added? It looks like the request was asked June of 2024. I am another parent who needs this added to avoid switching carriers for my child’s phone. Please get this feature added to parental settings!
I can set limits for WiFi use on my home internet, but it doesn’t solve the issue of my child having access to her phone without restriction. We need to be able to set healthy limits without having to take the phone.3 -
We are also SO disappointed. Why would a feature on the watch not be available on the phone, it feels like a bait and switch. We have far more control and management over out older child's android device using Google Family.
If you can't provide the technology for oversight, why not allow an app for the phone that does?
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We also are So frustrated this would be a feature of the phone if it is for the watch. Feels like a bait and switch. We have much better control and management of our older child's Android phone using Google family. If you aren't able to provide the technology, why not allow an app that can.
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I don’t want to argue with my daughter to take her phone away daily. I want to be able to cut it off from my phone and instantly like I can her Nintendo switch. I want to be able to set a schedule for apps and calls/texts. I want to have periods when no usage is allowed except to me or 911.
I’m considering cancelling my account and her having no phone.1
