Circle's Time Limits feature gives you control over how much time a family member spends online each day. You can set a Daily Time Limit for the total time a family member can spend online, or you can set limits by category of content and individual apps or websites.
What to know about Time Limits
- You can set up different Time Limits for each of your profiles.
- Your profiles can have different Time Limits for apps, categories of sites, and a Daily Time Limit.
- Time Limits are calculated against the Usage on your profile. Usage accrues as Circle monitors the devices assigned to the profile and their Internet traffic.
- Once a Time Limit is reached the app, category of sites, or all sites (depending on the type of Time Limit) will be unavailable. (Sites set to Unmanaged will still load even if a Time Limit is reached.)
- Time Limits are enforced from most general (Daily Total Time Limit) to most specific (App Time Limits).
- A Time Limit minimum is 15 minutes and the max is 12 hours.
How to set or change a Daily Time Limit
- From the Circle app home screen, tap a profile to open that family member's settings.
- Select Time Limits.
- Tap the selector beneath the profile picture and select the total amount of time for the day (see screenshot below).
- Tap Save.
How to set or change a Time Limit for an app, website, or category
- Open a family member's profile settings.
- Select Time Limits.
- Tap anywhere in the category or popular apps and websites section and select the amount of time for that category or app (see screenshot below).
- Tap Save.
No Time Limit will mean just that. There will not be a Time Limit on the app/website/category, but it will continue to be tracked in Usage and History.
By Reward Only prevents access to an app/website/category until you use the Rewards feature to add a Time Limit.
How to add weekend Time Limits
The weekend is often a time with fewer restrictions on time spent online, and some families want to have different Time Limits for the weekdays and the weekend. Here's how to set different Time Limits for weekdays and weekends.
- Open a family member's profile settings.
- Select Time Limits.
- Tap the weekend Time Limits icon at the top right of the screen (see screenshot below).
- Tap each day bubble to select or deselect it. Pick the days that should count as weekend days for this profile and tap Save.
- Pick the Daily, Category, and Apps or Websites Time Limits for those weekend days.
- Tap Save.
On the Time Limits screen, you will now see a selector to move back and forth between weekend and weekdays. Use this to see all the Time Limit settings for this profile.
Changing or Removing Weekend Days
- Open a family member's profile settings.
- Select Time Limits.
- Beneath the Weekdays/Weekend selector at the top, tap Edit Weekend Days.
- Tap the days to turn them on or off. Note: You can turn off Weekend Time Limits by tapping each day off.
- Tap Save after making your changes.
How to disable Time Limits
Open a family member's profile settings and select Time Limits. You can disable or reenable Time Limits using the toggle in the upper right-hand corner. You can also edit individual Time Limits and change them to "No Time Limit". This setting means there won't be a Time Limit for the app, category, or the day depending on your settings.
How does Circle enforce multiple Daily, Category, and App/Website Time Limits?
A profile can have three different types of Time Limits:
- Total Daily Time Limit
- Category Time Limit (ex. "Videos")
- App/Website Time Limit (ex. Netflix)
Circle enforces Time Limits from the most general (Daily Time Limit) to the most specific (first Categories, then Apps or Websites). Each App or Website belongs to one of Circle's Categories, and these can't have more time than their "parent" Category does. Similarly, neither Apps, Websites, nor Categories can have more time than the Total Daily Time Limit. Read more about
For example: If you've set up a 4 hour Total Daily Time Limit, you can't set a Category or App Time Limit higher than 4 hours for the set of days you've chosen. As well, if you've set up a Category Time Limit for "Videos" of 3 hours, you won't be able to set the Netflix Time Limit to more than 3 hours.
Can I set a site or app to always be available?
Don't care how much time your kiddo's spend on a site? You have a couple of options:
- Set the App or Category to Unmanaged. This will keep it from counting towards Time Limits or appearing in History/Usage.
- Only set a Daily Time Limit: you can set up a total daily time limit for the profile. Any traffic on the profile will count towards this limit, and once the limit is reached for the day all sites (that aren't unmanaged) will stop loading.
- The default for each App, Category, or the Daily Time Limit is "No Time Limit". This setting means there won't be a Time Limit for the app, category, or the day depending on your settings.
- Use Bedtimes, Focus Times, or Pauses to manage time online.