Using Circle while Schooling at Home

If you're schooling kiddos at home right now, you know how important it is to make sure your educational sites are available while distracting apps and sites are not! Circle has a couple of different ways to help you school kid's at home without online interruptions.

Set up some time for focus

Circle's parental controls can help you set up different Focus Times where only school/educational sites are allowed during the day.

Create some Focus Times

Note: the Focus Time feature is currently in beta release and available for iOS devices only. This feature is not available for Circle 1st generation.

Focus Times allow you to set up customized times during the day when only certain Apps or Categories of sites are allowed and all other Apps and Categories are filtered by Circle. You can use a Focus Time during the day to make sure only educational and learning sites are available for your children's profiles, and other distracting apps or sites are unavailable. Learn how to set up a Focus Time using this guide!

Create a school profile

With Circle's controls you can create a specific "School" profile that sets the sites and apps you don't want to be accessed as Not Allowed under the profile's Filter Settings. To select an App, Category, or Custom Filter as Not Allowed, tap on the Allowed button. Tap again to change to Unmanaged or again to switch back to Allowed.

You can add a new profile from the Circle app Menu by tapping "Add Profile."

During the day when you don't want those sites accessed, assign your kiddo's devices to the profile. During the window of time you'd like access to those sites, move the devices to a profile that allows them.

To change where a device is assigned to: tap on the profile, then tap Devices. Tap on the device you need to move, then tap "Assigned to..." and check the new profile.

Our article here can help with profile set up: Profile Setup.

Set up a Time Limit for certain Apps or Categories of sites

A Time Limit on distracting App or Category might give your kiddo some freedom on how to manage time as well. See more on that here: Circle Feature Guide: Time Limits.

You can manage a profile's Time Limit by opening the profile, then tapping on Time Limits. To add a Time Limit to an App or Category of sites, tap on the App/Category, and then choose your desired limit for the day. You can also set a Daily Time Limit at the top of the screen.

How can I make sure school sites are always able to load?

To make sure school and educational sites are always allowed, even during a Pause, Bedtime, or Focus Time, you'll need to set those sites or apps as Unmanaged using your filter settings or a custom filter:

To set an App, Category, or Custom Filter as Unmanaged, open the profile, tap on Filter, and scroll to find the App or Category you'd like Unmanaged (tap on the Custom Filter icon in the top right for those). Tap on the Allowed button, and it will change to Not Allowed. Tap again to change to Unmanaged.

Setting any website, app, or category of sites to Unmanaged will make it always available.

Making a Custom Filter

If you don't see the school or educational site you want to always allow in our popular apps and categories list, you can make a custom filter for it.

Determine what URLs need to be added as Custom Filters by using the app or site while your device is assigned to the profile and checking the History >> Visited section. You may need to create a couple of custom filters to make sure everything is loading right!