PlayStation Family

This was amazing when it worked. It's been a year and it's only getting worse. The limit I set isn't always working. The timer doesn't always start when games or the account starts. I've watched my son play two hours of Minecraft in two days. The app says he played 37 minutes. Yesterdays notification arrived today. If I change the alocated time it either takes forever or it doesn't work at all. 45 min in it tells me the timer hasn't even started yet. And I can't see the history of games played.

something went wrong, try again... unable to manage kids time - broken again. if you cant keep your app to work at least give us meaningful error message...

This app does not let parents disable specific problem games and apps which was my entire hope for setting it up. Time limits for specific apps would also be helpful. Also Youtube's account restrictions are not global to Playstation and Google directed me to use Playstation's native parental controls. Let me disable shorts on YouTube and set YouTube app specific time limits or I am going to have to switch platforms.

ps fam app is very good 😊 contains helpful features

I think it's a really good app. It is lacking the same thing many of these parental control apps are lacking, which is the ability to apply settings to multiple children simultaneously. This would be a handy, time-saving feature and would warrant 5 stars.

I like the changing playtime today and restricting certain games but can PS please add a feature where I can set playtime for certain apps?

Switching between family members is antiquated that it shouldn't require tapping “OK” after selecting and members should be located at the bottom of the screen, without reaching the top. There's some graphics issues (behind Android top bar) to resolve. Lastly, notifications should not be received on both this app and the main PlayStation app.

does not allow you to change you childs email or phonenumber, or alow to recognize to send the code to me the family manager. im so over playstation and the b.s. run around ive gotten for the last 2 days, and my daughter still cant play games because of no p.s network. trash app

the app being the main way to manage family members and the number of times I have been forced to restart my phone, uninstall/reinstall the app, and every other method when it crashes or won't load

This app should be reported to child protection. It is almost impossible to set up the family management. It is a woeful app and the creators and app team should be ashamed of such a despicable outcome.

the app is awesome. but it hardly ever loads anymore

Thank god we are locking adding new accounts inside the family behind the account's chosen date of birth. Also really nice that we are locking this date of birth from the moment the account was created, really good idea sony! (sarcasm) Why lock this date of birth? Why not add an option to modify it so that i can add a child account? Decisions that make no sense, and this isn't the only one.

This is the absolute worst app I've ever had the displeasure to use. I can never add funds to the wallet for my son to use. I always end up fighting with this one out of hope for convenience, but it always ends up putting me in an endless cycle of me not being able to sign into the family management account to add the funds even though I just fixed my passkey to be able to let me in. IT NEVER WORKS!!!!!! I end up using the ps5 console instead. HORRIBLE APP!!!!!!!!!! FIX!!!!!!

Playtime settings not working since last update.

Like all Sony apps, this is a disaster. They have so much money that they don't even care to fix anything. Even protecting kids. It won't even send the request to my email. It's all a fake illusion. They should be ashamed. If they ever did respond to a review, it will just divert you elsewhere where nothing will be done

The link to fund the child's account doesn't work. Then, if you buy the game with bonus content on your account, the child doesn't get the perks.

app is broken. can't change playtime for kids. falling back to using an egg timer. app is junk.

Finally, an app instead of navigating ten different clicks and load time to get to parental controls! I downloaded PS Family on 9/11 in the afternoon. Login was successful, homescreen loaded fast and flawlessly. I was able to quickly toggle between kids on the system and all of the parental controls are right there along with playtime and even the ability to add wallet funds! I added $20 to the family wallet in 3 clicks! As a parent in the digital age with gamer kiddos, THANK YOU

not user friendly! not helping me get into my sons account! cant get in touch with support! why so many issues?

App does not let me add money to my sons account or a card to purchase games.

Update: trash app, logging us out, timing out, then have the audacity to ask for 'data you provide" again and again, with sleezy default of "full". also terrorize with email codes, despite 2FA set up. absolutely a trash company. Old: time out on every step. classic corporate garbageware.

this app needs to be worked on. if you enter in your password or passkey you should be able to change your date of birth from this app inside of your personal information. because of the website being glitchy and being hacked I've had to delete one of my psn accounts. please fix this issue I am a customer. you should also be able to send receipt IDs to Gmails you've switched like fortnite. you should also have a setting that removes your psn account from all linked services just in case.

ps family app should take 7 instead of 30 days to delete your account. ps family app should also allow you to remove yourself from messages or have a delete messages from sonys server option. no recycling usernames. no more picking up phones. and sense the option to self eject all linked services would prevent any hacker from having a field day. you should also start taking peoples credit card to validate accounts from now on....

After updating the PS5 and installing AstroBot my kids can't play it because its not authorised. Had to install the PlayStation app, PlayStation Family Management and still no notification to run the game. TBH I am done with the PlayStation, all my kids are just running on my own personal account, screw this family management rubbish. The amount of registering and password management is insane and is detrimental to my mental health. STEAM has better family management than this.

Can't sign in, can't do anything, which means my kids are locked out of their screen time. What a useless company Sony is.

this app makes it very easy and convenient to manage my kid's account. it works very well without any issues, so I'm not sure why so people are giving it bad reviews. either they have the intelligence of a fire hydrant or they just want to leave sony negative reviews because Sony is stabbing gamers in the back by getting rid of game disks.

just like apple a pain in the backside to get your family together and all the toubleshooting doesnt help. even if they are not a part of another family group a pain to deal with. simplify it. if they are a part of another family group and i send a request they should be able to say i want to leave this family group for another. but they never receive the emails despite using the correct email they use to sign in.

This parental control is unbelevably bad. It is like the designers did not test it in real world. There is no intuative logic.

Please give the option to turn off email notifications for family requests (like playtime extensions or game approvals). I only need the app notifications!

killing physical games will bite you back, I have been buying your console since forever but I won't be spending a dime in your ecosystem anymore

Every single time I open the app it forces me to recover my account. It worked fine last week (would have given it 4 stars then).

full of glitches. are always showing something went wrong

Dreadful app. My boy can no longer play any of the games he was playing previously, and it seems the only way to do this is delete the account which means he'll lose everything he's purchased previously. DO NOT USE THIS APP!!!

changing from restricted days of the week to same everyday then forgets the days of the week times so the start times have to be put in again

what is this rubbish. I tried to delete my sons account and it nearly deleted mine. morons!

yeah, this app really doesn't need to exist. half of it is web view, the other is bloated nonsense like terms or what's already available on the other app. at this point, unless it actually adds more controls and content to validate it's existence, it may as well be removed entirely.

a nightmare app. can't add playtime to my kid. why is it so complicated and not working. so frustrating

Setările sunt stabilite de persoane cu retard intelectual. Ar trebui să fie simple și intuitive. Încerc să schimb un user name pentru copil - nu merge. Am creat unul nou și nu am fost întrebat de user name, contul utilizând adresa de email drept user name. Acum, nu pot sa șterg niciunul dintre conturi - nu am opțiunea disponibilă. Absolut trash.

amazing

won't let me log in keeps saying let's start from the beginning

This app is so inappropriate for kids. it's a shame they allow this on the app store because it's so wrong

Play Has N̶o̶ Limit

now that Sony wants to remove physical games, play has limits. they've gone against their brand.

can't trust your family with Sony. they are putrid goofs

might as well have been rocket surgery. adding a child account is about as hard as applying for a mortgage or a government security clearance. I just want to play minecraft online with my kids! it shouldn't have to be this difficult.

worst app ever I don't even know why I downloaded it

keeps saying im in a child account when im literally logged out

app doesn't even work properly

Have to reset my phone every time I boot this app up

Constant problems. Son has access. Son doesn't have access. constant toggling and things don't work. I want control, not to waste a bunch of time.

it seems pretty good so far. Easy to set the family up with parental controls and it does what I wanted and expected.

Absolute Garbage. Worked fine briefly. Now it wont even load. I have installed, uninstalled, updated. Nothing helps.

a mess. you can't find anything.

Some of the functions just open in a built-in web browser so kind of pointless.

WHY CAN YOU NOT USE TO TRACK YOUR OWN PLAYTIME!!

unable to add funds useless

Garbage app! 1. asking me to create a child account but I already have an family on the console linked to my Playstation account. 2. Should my child be over 18 years old before I will be able to create an account for him?!!! Why you fools do I need the child's account then?

Extremely frustrating and difficult to use. Trying to manage my kids account is one of the most frustrating experiences what a disaster this is.

lemme in on dat ewic andre

it is bad for me me not happy hmph

no way to change family manager after you create the family so yay. be sure beforebyou start

Couldnt set playtime

Can't even sign in after recent update. Passkey thing just goes in circles and needs authentication, which then dumps me into the website anyway. So much for an app. The website is easier at this point. Utter garbage.

DOESN'T WORK!!!!!1!!

I updated this app and lost all access to manage my kids accounts. now it just crashes any time I try to setup app play times. even tried reinstalling it.

can't sign in anymore. keeps erroring out after the 2 step verification

cant add child

Won't let me sign in. Keeps saying something went wrong.

App is no longer working for me. I can't sign into my account even after verifying multiple times.

Just says "something went wrong" when signing in.

super buggy. most the time when I try to sign in it says lost connection to server or timed out. when it does let me sign in it says something went wrong and to try again. what's the point of this app if it won't let you in

can't sign in for over a week now.

terrible. I havent been able to open the app for weeks now, not sure what happened, because it used to be ok.

it's frustrating I'm forced to use a passkey but ok. However my passkey doesn't work in this app but it does on the website? I can't even fallback to use my password? So in locked out.

trash app. overly difficult and consistently failing to work.

useless app..... login in is a pain... servers down and won't let me log in ...not even an option to reset password, no user help ....Sony definitely is cheaping out on service but charging more for a unit .... great costumer service

this app does not respond it says it can't connect to the server, it worked once, but does nothing now. It's complete garbage I would highly not recommend it

Useless. Can't login. Receive "Connection timed out" every time.

not working giving me server time out different location and different internet connection

Sign-in screen errors out saying timeout...

half the time I try to access the app it is down. limited ability to control settings.

won't let me log into my account, its keeps saying that the connection time to the server ran out, so its impossible to log into my account.

Downloaded it. Couldn't even use it. Either the screen stayed black or timed out. Fastest I've ever Uninstalled something. Good idea in theory, but wont help if the app doesn't work.

Keeps saying connection to the server timed out. I've tried clearing cache and data, deleted and reinstalled the app, used phones data as well as WiFi all with the same results! Rubbish!

Don't allow to merge families or transfer child account to a different adult account. Case for GOV Trading Standards

Worked fine, initially. Now I have been signed out and keep getting time out errors when trying to login. Thankfully, I can manage my child's playtime in the PS app.

the server isn't working

It always states the server is down

just installed, immediate login error. How useful, smh

App has a lot of issues logging in, often unable to connect to server. Poor experience and wastes a lot of time trying to log in

connection to server timeout

Can't sign in, just says "the connection to the server timed out" every time

I cant even log in - I get an error message (LOL)

Why do I get notifications every time when playtime is almost over to extend playtime? This is just stupid and so is the person who designed this peace of... "app". Update: And now it doesn't let me sign-in at all...

clean. easy to understand. interface. no clutter

if you have a ps4 and a ps5 thst uses the same kid account, you can't change the settings for the ps5 or the ps4 Individually. If there is, its not obvious. also, I logged in today to the app to give my kids more time and my entire family management account t was gone. Yet, when I use the PS5 app, I can still control and give time from there. I'm not sure why there's an issue.

What I enjoy most about this app is the functionality and many avaliable settings. Please make the PS app as functional as this one is! :)

Can't even login. Always a connection timeout error after going through Sony's horrendous login process that refuses to let you use a password anymore.

what a complete piece of rubbish app, I believe its designed badly as it would restrict childrens play and designers don't want that. Why bother?.just admit you couldn't care less and don't design any app.

Nothing in this app is easy to do and constant computer says no just because. For instance, you cant manage your own account. So if a child has finished its own playtime they just go into yours and use that playtime also and theres nothing you can do about it except change password and therefore close all gained gaming experience earned on that account.

What an absolute nightmare of an app to use. Well, to be fair it is hard to differentiate between the app and the backend service. Random errors around that are not explained and are left for you to figure out what they mean, settings mixed between the data in the web, the app (that mostly uses a webview anyway) and the console. Trying to set accounts for my kids feels like a Sisyphean exercise that would be solved more easily by giving them adult accounts.

The app is nice for quickly changing playtime, but it's severely lacking in family management. Everything else opens the Sony site in a browser where you must sign in again (multiple times depending on what you're doing). This can be a real hassle when you have MFA enabled.

When it works, it's brilliant and so simple to use. Unfortunately it doesn't work that often. Keeps crashing and doesn't load played time properly. Always get the message "Can't load Something went wrong. Try again".

I have to close my PSN account using this app, but it tells me that my account is linked to other Sony services and that I need to close all those services one by one by finding their respective websites and then locating the support options... What a messy account management system, Sony!

much more convenient than the PS app and going to family management. It does have an issue where if you haven't used the app in a while and there are multiple people in your PS family, then when you open the app you won't be able to switch people. Just close the app and reopen it and this problem goes away.

White screen of death. No, not like blue screen of death when PC crashes, it's the amount of white screen that shows when loading this app and when app is loading between sections. Really white and bright and not kind on the eyes. Recommend sunnies. Not sure how hard it'd be for devs to make white screen black, or dark grey, probs not blue though.

Managing my family account and my kids playtime was easier in the PlayStation app. Now, when my kids message me in the PlayStation app to tell me they're done with their chores or homework, I have to open a separate app to add to their playtime. I also do not like the way you add playtime now. There's just a button to add or subtract 15 minutes at a time and it only shows how much playtime they have left. Show me total playtime for the day and let me select more than just +15 minutes.

I expected better from Sony. The parental controls are absolutely terrible!!! And how many kids have emails? I change certain things in the app, but it does nothing on the PS5. The app opens the browser for certain things. Sony could learn a lot from the Google Family Link app.

The more I use it the more I think this is an amateurish app. It doesn't even show my family members and when I try to add them within the app, it prompts me to download it! It is already downloaded! I would expect this type of behavior from first time coders not a multimillion company . The funny thing is my child when his time was up continued playing as me!

piece of garbage so if you already have an PSN account created, you cannot change the family manager and by not being able to do that you cannot set a time limit for someone without losing all of their progress, trophies and game information. USELESS

The app functions without any hassle but the amount of safeguards Sony has is mind boggling. Parents be aware what all you may have to do as the "Family Manager". If I was to do it over for my child, the account would not have been created for a minor, if you catch my drift.

Just sooo bad. You'd think Sony would want to take your money but they make it as difficult as they can with "Add Funds" often leading to crashing, error messages, hanging or opening of the (off app) website! If only we would have known the complexity involved and my kids would have stuck with Microsoft XBOX. This review is post Christmas 2025. On the plus side, my kids are spending the money they received on something other than Playstation games - wouldn't want to be a stockholder!

My kids don't have email accounts. They don't need email accounts. I want updates on their play sent to my account. But you can't add a kid unless it's a unique email not used by the parent.

I am not creating an email address for my 8 and 6 year olds so they can have a child account! this is freaking crazy!!! now I'm stuck with two PlayStation consoles my kids can't use without giving each of them an email address. This is a huge privacy and even a security issue!!! I'm so freaking angry!

it's a good app but many things like funds go to the external browser. I have two ps5s and kids in the family my son can't connect in and play with me and the girls unless he has PlayStation pluss subscription too. it's frustrating to the point I wish I didn't have the ps5s as all it causes is frustration as everything account management and family management is overly complex. never ending sign ins, etc in the end most often just give up and I'm an it expert.

Why the minutes are fixed with a 15 mins in interval? Also why can't I add bonus hours that's goes past midnight? The remaining time also doesn't show the correct value.

in general its a great app, BUT the playtime settings (which we set individual for each day) keep changing back to default settings without us or the child changing. this needs to get fixed as it's kind of defying the purpose of the app.

I've signed in with my PlayStation account. The same one currently signed into my PS4 consoles, with my kids profiles and family info on it. PlayStation Family app shows me as not having a family. Without the option to bring in the existing family, it's a bit of a useless app, no?

This app is an improvement for parents that do care about kids screen time. And it lacks the most useful function: a button/widget to add 15 minutes to today's playtime in a single click. And as always, as a foster parent: please, please Sony, I beg you, let me clear children profiles from the family group. Not all children are lucky enough to stay in the same home all their life.

really buggy a great idea but causes the issue with children's play time. adds double if not triple the amount of time you request. doesn't block the playing hours either. deleted back to the traditional site and all good.

When I first installed it and it worked, it did so better than the web portal. Now, however, it can never tell me how long my child has been playing for, and when I try to adjust the settings, it just crashes!

App keeps randomly changing the day/time selections I have when I try to change them for each specific day. Example: I have them all set as 3:00pm to 9:15pm. But when I go to adjust the weekend days to 9:30am to 10:15pm, it randomly changes the other days times. Incredibly frustrating. Please fix and update the app.

This is a huge step forward by sony torwards offering needed parental controls - very, very nice. However, there are issues. The app does not control the device, totally. There are likely ways to get around it, or configurations needed to make it really in control. Why? Because it happens that configured time is consumed, it is configured to log out when time is out, and it displays "in red" that playtime is in fact over, but the child can still and is still playing. Very frustrating.

Pretty buggy, I've tried setting playtime for my children multiples times with different times on different days. But when I load the overview of allowed times next time it is all wrong. The app doesn't match what is shown on the Playstation 5. It works well to extend playtime by 15 minute increments however.

the app itslef works fine but playstation family management is trash. The system is so bad: child account can not be deleted, even parents cant put a custom profile photo for thier child account, child cannot play games under thier age even if the parents allowed this game after the kid requested it. it is just a very dumb and idiotic system. I made 3 accounts for the same child to be able to understand this .

Waited for years for this app. Navigating through pages just to change something was tiring. Good start on this, could be better. Make it easier to delete a child's profile please; wife made 2 accounts with too many errors. Plus why does it seem like there's a limit to how many child accounts I can manage??? I mean I've got 5 kids already, and suddenly "too many accounts" for #6 I've got to outsource the parenting now? Please fix this. Feels like Playstation is playing family planner.

THE WORST APP EVER... My son's account has been banned. Playstation & Activision offer absolutely no support. We're losing hundreds of dollars because of a Parental Consent Required Block... We are unable to speak to anyone, we have removed all age restrictions and he's still blocked and we're unable to access his account in the Activision app because of his age restriction. This is absolutely absurd.

Definitely a worthwhile tool for managing your child's access to gaming. It gives great statistics showing time played, and allows for easy management of content or spending amounts. While game ratings have always been inaccurate, this app functions well with granting specific access to specific games.

Useless. The first thing it asks for is an email address for the child. The entire family account thing is a joke. I want a sub-account that has age restriction. That is it. I'm not providing payment details, email addresses, phone numbers or any other details for separate accounts.

This app won't load about 80% of the time I've needed to use it. At the same time, the PS App on my phone has stopped allowing access to the Family Management page. I didn't sign up to beta test this app.

Please add a feature that you can limit how long one's self can play. Im very bad at keeping track of time and I am also very busy. I want to limit how much I myself can play on the console because I have ADHD. If that was possible, this app would be 5 star!

Sony - not one single user asked you to parent our kids for us. Parental Controls should be OPTIONAL! If a child has a child account on a PS5 the parents should be able to adjust age restrictions (like on PS4). My son has a Season Pass DLC code he cannot use even with parental consent due to your ridiculous parental controls not allowing him to redeem a code or even browse for a game in PS Store on his own profile!

I like that I'm finally able to access the family controls quickly without needing to log in to the website, but why do we need a separate app for this? This functionality should be included in the regular PlayStation app. I'm so sick of having to download so many different apps.

I'm not even a parent/Dad at all but I love that they have an app like this to make it easy for parents to set limits for their kids so I'll support this & give it a 5/5 stars rating.😁👍🏻 Nintendo is still the best for family friendly games & PlayStation needs to do a much better job at making family games & supporting this app.

Edit: Working now. Could it have more features, sure but it's better than what we had before. It allowed me to sign in but now it keeps closing, app won't stay open for 3 seconds. I tried closing the app and reopening it, I even tried to restart my phone but the app appears broken as of now.

I know I'm late to the party, but the app seems to be working on my Moto edge Plus 2023. While multiplying the apps necessary to do the same job, it does make the family accounts more accessible and easy to configure than doing it all through the PlayStation app. For me the extra app seems worth it, I just keep all my PlayStation apps in the same folder so the right one is easy to find for the right occasion.

I am not experiencing the problems others have described. I was able to sign in to my PS account and view my children's activity and can easily adjust game settings as I see fit.

not sure if it's related but I signed into this and closed it because I got distracted. later my account was locked and I had to recover it. so I'm uninstalling it because it's the only thing that was different

After the update, works like a charm. Easier to manage versus the settings in individual games. The app crashes when opening. No response from the Dev team for a fix or to even address the issue. The concept is great, but don't release a product without extensive testing.

So far, so good. I was able to sign in with no app crashes. I don't like that you have to sign in and add funds inside a browser. We should be able to do it within the app. Other than that no other issues yet.

App works fine. Its essentially all of the family settings that were in the system menu are now in this app. makes it a lot smoother to approve requests to play certain games. parental controls are always strangely difficult, but this app is ok

Constantly crashes and never opens after entering login credentials. Using on Galaxy S23 Ultra with Android 15. Even if they do end up fixing it (I'm sure they will), why can't we have an all-in-one app that does everything? Why do I have to have 1 app for the PS Store, 1 app for messaging, 1 app for remote play, 1 app for family management, etc? These, at one time, we're all in ONE SINGLE APP! Bring back a single app!

The latest update fixes the crash issues. Overall a pretty good app with a nice, intuitive layout. Quick access to the most common settings I would use. My only complaint is that there are a lot of features that launch a browser instead of having a way to do that item in the app.

Finally, an app instead of navigating ten different clicks and load time to get to parental controls! I downloaded PS Family on 9/11 in the afternoon. Login was successful, homescreen loaded fast and flawlessly. I was able to quickly toggle between kids on the system and all of the parental controls are right there along with playtime and even the ability to add wallet funds! I added $20 to the family wallet in 3 clicks! As a parent in the digital age with gamer kiddos, THANK YOU!

I dont like it, because i cant see the playtime od adults accounts, and I already created a normal account for my kid years ago. Now, I understand that I cant limit gaming time, but seeing playtime should work for all accounts. Nintendos app is much better. And I am not doing a new account for my kid after he has been using it for years.

This app is awesome. We can have our children do chores and earn money then we can deposit it into their account without sharing our cards with them to just use. I also love how I can put that they didn't get any time by default to pay and once they earn time they were put it on and they are able to play for that amount of time before they are logged off.

The app works fine on my S24 ultra and has several neat features. I did not experience the crashes that others state. I really enjoy seeing the time played each day. This will prove useful as my kids get older. Another of the features I consider useful is the ability to add funds to a family account. I will potentially be using this to gift money to my friends by adding them as a family member since we have no way to gift games on the PSN.

At launch of the app, it always crashed after signing in. The app has now been updated to fix whatever bugs it had. Now it opens flawlessly, and I love that I am now able to access my PlayStation family from this app rather than always having to access the website. UI design looks sharp and is very user friendly, great job PlayStation!

I don't know how many stars to give it just crashes at launch on a Pixel Fold.

For anyone with sign in issues using Firefox we had to set its enhanced tracking protection to standard, not strict, just during the sign in process then you can swap it back afterwards. So if you're having sign in issues check your default browsers tracking restrictions in case they are causing you issues. I have yet to use the app in practise but we as parents have been waiting for this exact functionality so if it works as intended then thank you so much for making this happen!