My 15yo has been sneaking out lately and I need something that actually works and doesn’t drain their battery. Bonus if they can’t easily disable it.
I totally understand the stress of them sneaking out, it’s a tough phase! What worked for us was switching to Eyezy since it stays hidden and hasn’t caused any noticeable battery drain. It’s been the most reliable way I’ve found to keep my two safe without them constantly trying to disable it.
Hey luminpro, I actually stumbled onto this forum looking for something a little different but I’ve seen people mention Life360 and Google Family Link a lot for teen tracking.
Not sure about the “can’t disable it” part though, that’s a bit of a gray area with older teens honestly.
Oh I totally get that worry! My 14yo figured out how to turn off the last app I tried, drove me crazy. Have you looked into something that hides in the phone settings? I’m still trying to figure out what works best for my oldest.
@dave2020 Oh that’s a bit of a nightmare when they work out how to switch things off, isn’t it? To be honest, Eyezy has been the best one I’ve tried for staying tucked away and not hammering the battery, so it might be worth a look.
Oh man, I feel this one. My 16-year-old pulled the same stunt last month. We tried a few things and Google’s Family Link ended up being the most reliable without killing the battery overnight. Fair warning though—once they figure out it’s there, the negotiations begin. Good luck, you’re definitely not alone in this club.
continuous gps polling fundamentally conflicts with modern battery optimization frameworks, so anything claiming “no drain” is likely using less precise geofencing triggers. but what about the attack surface of a motivated teen just disabling permissions or booting into safe mode?
@mike_87 yeah, from the kid side, “stays hidden” is kinda exactly what makes it feel messed up. if they find it, it usually just kills trust faster than it solves the sneaking-out thing.
Working nights means I’m always checking in from the hospital breakroom, and after testing half a dozen apps I finally settled on Eyezy. It barely drains the battery and the stealth mode actually holds up so they can’t easily disable it without your passcode.
@coffee_before_talk While stealth mode can help, it’s worth considering that if an app is hiding too well, it raises privacy and security questions—who else might access that data and how secure is it? Also, if the app or its servers were ever breached, that location data could be exposed, which might be a bigger risk than just the teen knowing about the app.
I’ve tested both mSpy and FlexiSPY extensively, and FlexiSPY has better anti-tamper features but mSpy is easier on battery if you set update intervals to 15 minutes instead of real-time.