The Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, and Fire TV Edition televisions don’t technically have a way to just password protect the entire device from being used, like you would lock your phone or tablet. However, a recent change to the options for child profiles on the Fire TV does now provide a way to essentially lock out the regular Fire TV interface with a PIN code. Here is how to do it. Read more ›
Amazon recently added the option for Fire TVs and Fire TV Sticks to always ask for a profile to be selected when the device wakes up. This was done so that the Fire TV’s regular interface can be locked out by default. If you want this capability or if you find it annoying, here is how to turn it on or off. Read more ›
A recent software update to Amazon Fire TVs and Fire TV Sticks has added a simple but powerful new feature to how the devices wake up. If you have a child profile created through Amazon’s FreeTime service, which is being rebranded as Amazon Kids, you can now configure the Fire TV to ask you which profile you’d like to use every time it wakes up. The reason why this is powerful is that, when combined with a child PIN, this, for the first time, gives Fire TV owners a way to completely lock their device. Read more ›
Along with today’s announcement of the rebranding of Amazon FreeTime into Amazon Kids, Amazon has revealed that a new home screen option will be coming to Fire tablets. The new home screen will be an alternative to the current kid-friendly FreeTime experience available for child profiles. The new interface is meant to be closer to a more traditional tablet for children ages 8 and up. Read more ›
Amazon has announced that they are rebranding their kid-friendly service formerly known as Amazon FreeTime into Amazon Kids. The paid subscrition service formerly known as Amazon FreeTime Unlimited will now be adopting the “+” symbol that many streaming services are using and be known as Amazon Kids+. Read more ›
Get this Headphone + FreeTime Deal
Here is a great deal for those of you with kids. Amazon is offering a 3 Month FreeTime Unlimited subscription for $2.99 that also comes with Free Disney Kids Headphones. At a regular price of $29.99, the 3 month FreeTime Unlimited subscription is a good deal on its own, but the Disney headphones, which retail for $20-$25, make it the best deal I’ve ever seen for FreeTime. To get this deal, just add the $2.99 offer to your cart and checkout. There will be a message (on a desktop browser at least) at the top of the checkout page telling you that you qualify for the free headphones. Finish checking out and then you’ll be able to go back and purchase one of these 3 Disney Kids Headphones with a discount at checkout that makes the headphone free. These headphones have a 3 level switch that lets you set a volume limit so that your little one doesn’t hurt their hearing. This deal is actually worth it for the headphones alone. FreeTime Unlimited, which provides access to hundreds of kid-friendly games, educational apps, movies, shows, and books, is almost just an extra perk.
In conjunction with the release of the Echo Dot Kids Edition, Amazon is bringing FreeTime to existing Echo, Echo Dot, and Echo Plus devices. FreeTime is what Amazon calls their advanced parental control options and family-focused features found on their hardware devices, like Fire tablets and Kindle ebook readers. A paid subscription called FreeTime Unlimited will also be available, which primarily adds access to kid-friendly content, but FreeTime features are free for all. Read more ›
Amazon has updated their Parent Dashbord to now allow parents to remotely update the parental controls of their kid’s devices. Previously, if you wanted to update the FreeTime settings of something like a Fire Kids Edition tablet, you had to do it on the tablet itself. Now parents can use any browser to adjust things like screen time limits, set a bedtime, whitelist apps, enable/disable the browser, modify educational goals and more. Ever since its launch last year, the Parents Dashboard has given parents insight into the apps, games, videos, and ebooks that their kids use most. Now it will also let parents immediately act on those stats and adjust parental controls accordingly from the same interface.
Amazon FreeTime Unlimited is a collection of thousands of kid-friendly TV shows, movies, books, and apps. It’s a subscription service that costs $4.99 per child ($2.99 for Prime members), or $9.99 for a family of up to 4 children ($6.99 for Prime members). Since its launch in 2012, the service has only been available through Kindle and Fire devices, but Amazon has just released a FreeTime app in the Google Play Store, making the service available outside of Amazon’s own hardware for the first time. Read more ›
Amazon FreeTime, both the free and paid version, is a great feature of the Fire TV and Fire tablets that allows parents to give their kids access to curated movies, shows, games, and websites, without worrying about them being exposed to adult themed content. Amazon has moderators who have approved content for kids, including over 8,000 books and 40,000 white-listed webpages.
Today, Amazon has introduced a Parent Dashboard for FreeTime that allows parents to see exactly how their kids are spending their time while on Fire devices. The dashboard also includes what Amazon is calling “Discussion Cards” that give parents a summary of the content their kids have interacted with, to make conversations about books, shows, and games easier. Read more ›
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