Google Family link set-up?

Aoibhell said:

I installed Google play on my daughter's kf and now I'm trying to set up my Google family link. The problem is that I can't figure out how to add her Google account to the kid, since she is under 13. Her child account is limited to what apps she can use, and all the apps I can think of where I might be able to add her (like Gmail), she doesn't have the permission to add herself.

Is there any way to add a Google child (under 13) user account?

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What would you have them using to device for?

you have to create the account from the parent's Family Link app on your phone.

Were you able to figure this out? I'm having the same problems. At first it wouldn't install on the Kindle Fire because it was connecting to her father's g-mail account so I reset to factory settings. Now it's saying I can't install using her gmail address and password.

We're you able to figure this out? I am stuck because I believe it needs the Google settings app rather than the fire version. I am getting the error "this profile manager is required for kids under 13". Rather annoyed by every aspect of the fire tablet and this seems to be the final straw.

Curious to know

I ma curious to know if you ever figured this out? I just jumped down the rabbit hole of the Google Family Link account for my twins but can't seem to figure out how to use it with the Kindles.... Any help you can provide would be so appreciated.

Aoibhell said:

I installed Google play on my daughter's kf and now I'm trying to set up my Google family link. The problem is that I can't figure out how to add her Google account to the kid, since she is under 13. Her child account is limited to what apps she can use, and all the apps I can think of where I might be able to add her (like Gmail), she doesn't have the permission to add herself.

Is there any way to add a Google child (under 13) user account?

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I'm working on this one as well. Keep getting stuck in a loop, I try to log in my sons account, it wants to install Family Link Manager, installed Family Link apk, it leads into the same thing, saying it needs to install itself..I'm just looking to do a custom rom at this point I guess. Should probably just let him use the Freeplay thing from Amazon but paying for the whole damn Google Play Premium One whatever family plan...

I have been playing with this and got a little farther. I have an old SGS5 and got my kid set up there. Then I extracted the Family Link Manager APK (different than the Family Link APK).

Then:

1. Installed the four APKs needed to install Google Play Store: https://xdaforums.com/amazon-fire/general/how-to-install-google-play-store-fire-t3486603
2. Installed the Family Link Manager APK. I posted it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eVmTXa1KqvZ_MV9tmYaZYYsd-2E1351C
3. Launched Google Play Store
4. Signed in as my child
5. It asks which parent is setting up the device. I choose myself.
6. Got a warning about Android 5 and not be able to control an apps permissions after approving.
7. Then, a message that Family Link Manager needs to be installed. I already installed it at this point.
8. Checking Info...
9. It asks for a name for the Device
10. Asks which installed apps should be blocked
11. Then I get a screen that says, "Next, you'll activate Family Link Manager, which helps parents..."

After clicking next, I get a screen that says, "This profile manager is required for Google Accounts managed with Family Link." The only option is to click, "GOT IT." I then end up on the previous, "Next, you'll activate..." screen. If I click NEXT there, I see the same, "This profile manager is required..." screen. The process is now stuck in this loop. Does anyone have any idea what may be preventing the process from accessing the profile manager? Is it talking about the default Android profile manager? Has Amazon replaced that with their own?

One other thing: I cannot install the Family Link APK. It looks like it is going to, but then says "App not installed". Does anyone know if this is my whole problem? I have four kids, each with a Fire tablet. I am going to try this process on another one and see if I get closer.

Found a workaround for anyone interested. Create a new gmail account with a date of birth older than 13 (if in the UK, may need to be older for other countries). Invite this new account to join your 'family'. Install Google Play on the Kindle Fire (which can be done without root), install Google Play Music, add the new account to the Music app and job done! [EDIT just noticed the post above has links for installing the Play services]

Only downside I've found is that if more than 1 child then they are 'sharing' the account and any playlists they create are also shared.

This is what I've done for now as well, just was hoping to take advantage of the schmancy new parental controls and such via the family link thing. Hope it works for Chromebooks now that they are the new Android tablets

iain2510 said:

Found a workaround for anyone interested. Create a new gmail account with a date of birth older than 13 (if in the UK, may need to be older for other countries). Invite this new account to join your 'family'. Install Google Play on the Kindle Fire (which can be done without root), install Google Play Music, add the new account to the Music app and job done! [EDIT just noticed the post above has links for installing the Play services]

Only downside I've found is that if more than 1 child then they are 'sharing' the account and any playlists they create are also shared.

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Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

Xeroid said:

After clicking next, I get a screen that says, "This profile manager is required for Google Accounts managed with Family Link." The only option is to click, "GOT IT." I then end up on the previous, "Next, you'll activate..." screen. If I click NEXT there, I see the same, "This profile manager is required..." screen. The process is now stuck in this loop. Does anyone have any idea what may be preventing the process from accessing the profile manager? Is it talking about the default Android profile manager? Has Amazon replaced that with their own?

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Click to collapse

exactly the same problem with Mi Pad 4 - Oreo 8.1...
unable to proceed & get past that screen...

do you find the solution?

I'm in the exact same loop. Did you ever figure it out?

Xeroid said:

I have been playing with this and got a little farther. I have an old SGS5 and got my kid set up there. Then I extracted the Family Link Manager APK (different than the Family Link APK).

Then:

1. Installed the four APKs needed to install Google Play Store: https://xdaforums.com/amazon-fire/general/how-to-install-google-play-store-fire-t3486603
2. Installed the Family Link Manager APK. I posted it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eVmTXa1KqvZ_MV9tmYaZYYsd-2E1351C
3. Launched Google Play Store
4. Signed in as my child
5. It asks which parent is setting up the device. I choose myself.
6. Got a warning about Android 5 and not be able to control an apps permissions after approving.
7. Then, a message that Family Link Manager needs to be installed. I already installed it at this point.
8. Checking Info...
9. It asks for a name for the Device
10. Asks which installed apps should be blocked
11. Then I get a screen that says, "Next, you'll activate Family Link Manager, which helps parents..."

After clicking next, I get a screen that says, "This profile manager is required for Google Accounts managed with Family Link." The only option is to click, "GOT IT." I then end up on the previous, "Next, you'll activate..." screen. If I click NEXT there, I see the same, "This profile manager is required..." screen. The process is now stuck in this loop. Does anyone have any idea what may be preventing the process from accessing the profile manager? Is it talking about the default Android profile manager? Has Amazon replaced that with their own?

One other thing: I cannot install the Family Link APK. It looks like it is going to, but then says "App not installed". Does anyone know if this is my whole problem? I have four kids, each with a Fire tablet. I am going to try this process on another one and see if I get closer.

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---------- Post added at 12:50 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:47 AM ----------

I'm in the exact same loop.. Did you ever figure it out??

Xeroid said:

I have been playing with this and got a little farther. I have an old SGS5 and got my kid set up there. Then I extracted the Family Link Manager APK (different than the Family Link APK).

Then:

1. Installed the four APKs needed to install Google Play Store: https://xdaforums.com/amazon-fire/general/how-to-install-google-play-store-fire-t3486603
2. Installed the Family Link Manager APK. I posted it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eVmTXa1KqvZ_MV9tmYaZYYsd-2E1351C
3. Launched Google Play Store
4. Signed in as my child
5. It asks which parent is setting up the device. I choose myself.
6. Got a warning about Android 5 and not be able to control an apps permissions after approving.
7. Then, a message that Family Link Manager needs to be installed. I already installed it at this point.
8. Checking Info...
9. It asks for a name for the Device
10. Asks which installed apps should be blocked
11. Then I get a screen that says, "Next, you'll activate Family Link Manager, which helps parents..."

After clicking next, I get a screen that says, "This profile manager is required for Google Accounts managed with Family Link." The only option is to click, "GOT IT." I then end up on the previous, "Next, you'll activate..." screen. If I click NEXT there, I see the same, "This profile manager is required..." screen. The process is now stuck in this loop. Does anyone have any idea what may be preventing the process from accessing the profile manager? Is it talking about the default Android profile manager? Has Amazon replaced that with their own?

One other thing: I cannot install the Family Link APK. It looks like it is going to, but then says "App not installed". Does anyone know if this is my whole problem? I have four kids, each with a Fire tablet. I am going to try this process on another one and see if I get closer.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

so close...

i found a few useful nuggets with `adb logcat` . Unfortunately, they exited my scroll back buffer before i could write them down.

1. the initial loop (downloading the app)
   • it doesn't have permission to write to storage; looks like its downloading and discarding
   • ... it should be like "!@%# where'd my download go?"
   • thanks for the apk - sideloading gets us moving on
2. the next loop (activate manager) ... more permission issues
   • this time like "denied granting because this is not a system app".
   • i thought its trying to become a device admin -- so i manually enabled it in the settings > device admin ... no change

would someone (smarter than i) please point out which permissions & how to grant them, or tell me if i'm way off base ? alternately, with root - we can make this a system app, so it is not blocked from what it needs ?

FWIW: i also managed to use my sons account for ~7min ... opened the store - accepted T&Cs -- updated installed apps, grabbed a few from the family library & request a few new apps ... then i got a notification (on parent and child devices) "the account was removed because setup was incomplete"

I have been trying to get this working as well. From the looks of it, it is down to a missing settings page. I guess we could sideload the settings.apk from a AOSP device and see if that gives us access to the required pages to enable access for the app? Would that work?

leaskovski said:

I have been trying to get this working as well. From the looks of it, it is down to a missing settings page. I guess we could sideload the settings.apk from a AOSP device and see if that gives us access to the required pages to enable access for the app? Would that work?

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I tried installing a settings.apk from apk-mirror but the name conflict with the one already installed

Stuck at the same place

Hi, did you managed to figure this out because I'm stuck at the same place as you!

Xeroid said:

I have been playing with this and got a little farther. I have an old SGS5 and got my kid set up there. Then I extracted the Family Link Manager APK (different than the Family Link APK).

Then:

1. Installed the four APKs needed to install Google Play Store: https://xdaforums.com/amazon-fire/general/how-to-install-google-play-store-fire-t3486603
2. Installed the Family Link Manager APK. I posted it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eVmTXa1KqvZ_MV9tmYaZYYsd-2E1351C
3. Launched Google Play Store
4. Signed in as my child
5. It asks which parent is setting up the device. I choose myself.
6. Got a warning about Android 5 and not be able to control an apps permissions after approving.
7. Then, a message that Family Link Manager needs to be installed. I already installed it at this point.
8. Checking Info...
9. It asks for a name for the Device
10. Asks which installed apps should be blocked
11. Then I get a screen that says, "Next, you'll activate Family Link Manager, which helps parents..."

After clicking next, I get a screen that says, "This profile manager is required for Google Accounts managed with Family Link." The only option is to click, "GOT IT." I then end up on the previous, "Next, you'll activate..." screen. If I click NEXT there, I see the same, "This profile manager is required..." screen. The process is now stuck in this loop. Does anyone have any idea what may be preventing the process from accessing the profile manager? Is it talking about the default Android profile manager? Has Amazon replaced that with their own?

One other thing: I cannot install the Family Link APK. It looks like it is going to, but then says "App not installed". Does anyone know if this is my whole problem? I have four kids, each with a Fire tablet. I am going to try this process on another one and see if I get closer.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

So I went through the process of installing on a android VM, and it looks like this might be down to profiles. It looks like there are multiple profiles on the device after setup.

It seems to work until some timeout triggers and the account gets removed, but I'm able to install apps and have the approval come through to my device.

I haven't been able to break out of the loop. If I manually installed Family Link then it would prompt for which account to add. Selecting the child's account would stay in the loop. Adding my own would break out of it and I'd be able to access to Play Store but only as myself. The top left selector allowed my to choose the child account but would just put me back into the loop. Eventually I cleared away the Family Link stuff in the hope that a fresh attempt would work but once I was the sole account in the Play Store, I found it impossible to break out of that situation, even after deleting data from the various Google apps. I reckon removing either the Android user or the Google account record from the "Users & accounts" section in Settings would allow me to proceed but bloody FireOS hides this in favour of their own hobbled multi-user stuff.

I have made a discovery though. I found that the Humble Bundle app is also broken and despite the problem being very different, I believe the cause is the same as you get the exact same Download Provider permissions error in logcat. This post explains that it is down to an incompatible difference in FireOS compared to stock. I tried to replace DownloadProvider and DownloadProviderUi with APKs from LineageOS 12.1 but got INSTALL_FAILED_UPDATE_INCOMPATIBLE. I then "uninstalled" the existing apps using the same trick that the debloater does but then I got into a real mess as the earlier error remained and I wasn't able to restore the old apps either, even with the APKs, as they have separate ODEX files. The app isn't even really uninstalled as it is a system app and I do not have root but it seems sufficiently broken that I will have to wipe and start again. I still wonder if this is the right direction for solving this problem though. Any bright ideas?