How Can I Monitor My Child’s Text Messages on Android?

Gone are the days when parents worried about the bullies harassing their child in schools, or a stranger stalking their little girls in public transport. Things changed drastically, and it’s not the homework or grades or a prom date you should be worried about anymore. With the advancement of technology and the vast reach of high-speed internet for the last few years, the dangers that should make you think are different. It’s your kid’s online activities that matter most at this point of time as just a casual chat with an unknown person can bring in the worst kind of criminal right into your child’s life. Hence, you must monitor the gadgets your children regularly use, especially smartphones.

But if you’re asking this question, “how can I monitor someone text messages without them knowing” in your mind, then please continue reading this article. By the time you finish, you will have all the necessary information in detail about the best text messaging monitor apps available in the market. So, without wasting any more time, let’s see what options are available currently and which one should be your top choice.

How can I monitor my childs text messages for free?

If you think they exist in movies and thriller novels only, you can’t be more wrong. Yes, they are available for anyone to buy freely, and you can purchase and download one with just a few clicks on the internet right now.

These phone spy apps are undetectable and continue monitoring the smartphones they are installed in. You can install one in your kid’s phone and keep getting all the information, including text messages, call logs, browsing activities, and more.

However, before you decide on which app you should buy, as there’s an awful lot of them, read this article as we have reviewed the top 5 text messaging monitor apps here so that you can choose one based on your exact requirements.

NEXSPY

There’s a lot of variety if you want to buy a reliable spy app for Android and iPhone that would enable you to monitor your kid’s phone secretly. However, although most of them are good enough to serve your purpose, it’s the best one on which you want to invest your money. NEXSPY works equally great for both Android and iOS, so if you’re wondering “how can I monitor my child’s text messages on iPhone” – NEXSPY should be the answer. And when it comes to choosing the best one in the mobile spy app category, most of us can’t even think of anything else besides NEXSPY. Why? Here’s why and the reasons are quite no-brainer-

Comprehensive user dashboard

A good spy tool should come with a dashboard account where the owner can log in any time to check all the notifications and the data collected from the target device. NEXSPY comes with one, and some more. Not only does it provide a user dashboard, but the dashboard consists of all the data, including audio, video, call history, message backup, and more neatly categorized for the user to view, download, and delete. It’s a great feature with greater convenience, we must admit.

Phone and message logs

Knowing who the target person called to, or from which number she or he received calls is one thing, but NEXSPY logs the date and time stamp of each call and message so that you know when the conversation occurred and how long it continued. And needless to say that you can even choose to receive a copy of the recorded call in your dashboard to listen to it later. Pretty neat, we must say.

Conventional SMS and instant messaging apps monitoring

With NEXSPY, you can record and keep track of the conventional text, multimedia messages, and chats over instant messaging applications. Each of the messages will be saved in the dashboard with various necessary details like the name of the sender, number, exact time and date when they were received or sent.

Record device surroundings

Another cool feature NEXSPY comes with is you can listen to the surroundings of the target device without letting the phone owner be aware of it.

VoIP monitoring

Most Android and iPhone spy apps let you monitor the phone calls, but NEXSPY allows you to monitor the calls made through popular VoIP apps like Skype, WhatsApp, Messenger, and more.

Monitor the phone camera

This feature takes your spying on the next level as every time the owner pops her phone out and takes a photo or video with the camera, you get a copy of the same inside your user account.

GPS monitoring

GPS tracking is a crucial feature NEXSPY offers that can put your mind at ease whenever you want to know your child’s location when outside. The most important thing with GPS is it doesn’t require the device to be online to track the location (although being online increases the accuracy drastically, also receiving the coordinates is possible only when the device comes online).

Tracking Browsing details

Tracking your child’s regular internet activities was never so easy before! NEXSPY tracks internet browsers and social platforms like Facebook, and more in real-time, and you can check those tracking reports inside the account dashboard whenever you wish.

Kidguard

Kidsguard is another phone monitoring app that lets you look into your kid’s digital activities so that you can make sure they are not getting exposed to inappropriate things which one can come across online any time if unrestricted. Not only that, this tiny software lets parents monitor and track messages, IM chats, GPS, call history, and applications – all to ensure the kid’s safety and security and to prevent them from being subjected to cyberbullying, and other issues which affect their mental and physical wellbeing. Here are some of the most notable features Kidguard offers

Monitoring Snapchat and other social apps

One of the top features of Kidsguard is it enables one to snoop into some of the most hi-tech ways today’s children communicate, such as Snapchat, WhatsApp, Viber, and others. Regular spy tools can’t monitor those apps, and that’s one caveat you can overcome with more advanced Kidsguard. It keeps monitoring and recording all the text and multimedia communications using these apps so a parent can be sure that his/her child is not getting involved in any conduct that’s not appropriate. The best thing is they won’t even know that they are under a real-time radar and it’s a better way rather than preventing them from using those popular applications altogether, as eventually, they will find a way around in that case.

Tracking calls, messages, and GPS locations

Kidsguard lets the parents track call logs, SMS, and GPS locations, and Kidsguard does all of them in real-time. So, there’s no chance you can’t be definite where your kids are or whether they are at the place they said they would be.

Retrieve deleted messages and call logs

Not only it monitors every message and call sent or received in the phone, but it is capable of retrieving deleted messages and call logs. That means there’s no way your children can hide their phone usage even if they try to erase the logs.

KidsGuard is an excellent piece of tracking software that can get the job done, but its steep pricing makes it difficult to recommend. Yes, its price is at par with the top of the line spy tools; but feature wise, Kidsguard is not as versatile as they are.

mSpy

mSpy is another Android and iPhone monitoring app to track all of your child’s online activities using her/his smartphone. mSpy, unlike many other similar tools, is compatible with both Android and iOS. It provides best in class parental control features which can ensure your child’s safety when they are out of your sight. If you’re wondering if you should try this app or not, let me tell you that it comes with a full seven days free trial, and you can ask for the refund within the trial period in case you don’t like it, which is very unlikely anyway. Let us look at few of its prominent features

Contact/Call log/SMS/MMS

mSpy retrieves the whole phonebook, along with records for calls, SMS and MMS from your kid’s device – in stealth mode.

Browser logs

No matter if your child wipes his browsing logs regularly, or even if she uses incognito mode, mSpy is capable of tracking every bit of her browsing history.

Calendar/note/tasks

In your user account, you can view all the new and previous calendar, note and task entries in your on the device mSpy installed on.

Qustodio

With its headquarter in Barcelona, Qustodio is a Spanish software development company that markets one of the most comprehensive parental control apps money can buy. This app is targeted to the global audience as its user account is available in more than eight global languages, like English, French, Spanish, Chinese, and more. Probably that’s the reason it enjoys a more widespread global customer base exceeding a whopping one million subscribers. Let’s see how it fares compared to others in terms of features

Versatility

A parental control tool should be available for more than one platform to be a complete solution, and Qustodio just aces in terms of cross-platform compatibility for various operating systems, including Windows, Mac, Android, iPhone, Kindle, and more.

Stealth message log monitoring

It tracks SMS and MMS messages in your children’s smartphone, in real-time.

Keyword alerts

It’s easy to pre-set a list of specific target keywords, like alcohol, sex, suicide, etc. so that every time any of that particular terms are typed on your kid’s phone – you’ll be alerted by a notification to your own phone.

Wrapping it up: Best Apps to Monitor Text Messages

In this brief piece, we have reviewed four top parental control apps, and regardless which one you select, you’re not going to be disappointed. But as it’s quite customary to name one in a comparison review, we recommend NEXSPY. It provides everything that other tools in this list offer, along with many other unique features, and of course it’s available for a relatively affordable price.