Google apps are unusual in that many Google services overlap with each other. If you are trying to enable Google Classroom, Google Drive, or Google Hangouts, please use the guide below to get yourself up and running with these services.
Allowing Google Classrooms, Drive (Docs, Sheets, etc.), or Hangouts for a profile
- Open the profile for which you'd like to enable Google Classroom.
- Tap Filters.
- At the top, select either Teen or Adult as the filter level. (The Kid filter level is too restrictive to allow these services.)
- Then, scroll down to the filter categories below and ensure that Science & Technology, Business, Chats & Forums, and Education are set to either Allowed or Unmanaged.
- Finally, review the other Apps, Websites, and Categories in this family member's Filter settings and ensure that everything else is still set as expected.
For some more assistance on how to change Filter settings, check out our Filters Feature Guide.
Why are these steps necessary?
It may not seem intuitive to you that these steps would be required, so we'd like to offer a bit more explanation for what is happening here.
These Google services utilize a wide variety of underlying tools in order to make them work. For example, the Google Classroom service shares the same resources like Google's video chat service, but each of these is classified by Circle in a different way. To allow one, the other must be allowed as well.
If your kids aren't yet Teens and you're worried this filter level is too open, you can always customize the Teen profile filter level to be more restrictive by setting other categories, apps, or websites to Not Allowed. Just make sure the "Chat and Forums" category is set to allowed if you want your kids to be able to use Google Docs, Drive, or Classroom!
Setting up additional Custom Filters
Want to make sure all Google Docs, Hangouts, Meet, or Classroom or links work to load? You may need to add the additional domains as Allowed / Unmanaged using a Custom Filter.
- meet.google.com
- classroom.google.com
- hangouts.google.com
- googlevideo.com
- docs.google.com
- googledocs.com
- forms.google.com
- edu.google.com
- accounts.google.com
You can also use Custom Filters to make sure other sites load correctly by tapping on the site in History >> Visited or Filtered and selecting Set as Allowed or Set as Unmanaged.
Last Resort
As a last resort you can set up google.com as a Custom Filter that is Unmanaged. This will make sure any websites that use the top level domain of google.com (meet.google.com, classroom.google.com, etc.) will always be available, even during a Bed Time, Off Time, Time Limit being reached, etc. To do so:
- Open the Circle app and then tap on the profile you'd like to create that Custom Filter for.
- Tap on Filter.
- Tap on the Custom Filter icon in the top right corner of the app.
- Add google.com as url.
- Tap on Allowed twice to switch it to Unmanaged.
Known Issue: IP Addresses Incorrectly Categorized as Online Games
The Circle team is aware of an issue where some Google IP addresses are incorrectly categorized as the Online Games category. If you set this category of sites as "Not Allowed" or there is a Time Limit for the category that has been reached Google Meet may have connectivity issues. Our team is working to resolve this issue and make sure things are resolved promptly.
There is one thing that you might be able to do to get this to work until we've released a fix for this known issue. If you are using an iOS device to manage your Circle account you can create a custom filter for the IP addresses that are being used and mark them as Unmanaged. This will allow things to function and still allow you to manage devices properly.
Here is how to create a custom filter for those IP addresses:
- Open the Circle Parent app then tap on the profile in question.
- Tap on History >> then Visited and History >> Filtered to identify the IP addresses used (example: 172.253.117.127 or 52.113.50.124) and record the IP address.
- Open the Profile >> Filter level >> tap the icon in the upper right hand corner of the screen that looks like a plus over a filter.
- Tap where it says "Add website..." in grey letters and type in one of the IP addresses identified above. Tap return/done on the keyboard. This will add it to the custom filter list.
- Now, tap next to the newly added IP address it where it says Allowed to cycle to Not Allowed then again to cycle to Unmanaged. Repeat the steps above for all of the IP Addresses that you identified.
After you have completed that process, you will want to test it out and check the History >> Visited and History >> Filtered for any additional IP Addresses that might show up. Set these to Unmanaged as well.