Self Locking Parental Control Guide
Made a write up for a post, and I figure more people will see it if I make it its own post. My experience is primarily on android, with some limited windows.
Ive been using family link and salfeld. for windows, its just salfeld.
You can change your google account age to be under 13 and set it up to be monitored, so you cant uninstall family link until you either age out or change the age again. Be careful about doing this to your main google account though, the process is destructive and you will lose stuff. Your phone will also only be able to have one account on it going forward, so checking main emails is more difficult if its a gmail.
Download some educational games, and set up Salfeld to give you bonus time for using them. Happykids has a bunch of great shows on it, and the leo and friends games are great. Youtube Kids sucks tbh, unless my algorithm hasn't managed to find anything interesting. (Aside from Ms. Rachel, shes great.)
In family link you can restrict access to explicit content, I've found that it mostly works, but it works really well when also paired with salfelds content filters too. An interesting thing is that googles filter is good at blocking specific subreddits, so you can still use the site mostly as normal.
Go through the rest of the family link settings too, its worth looking. Family link is device level so there are very few work arounds.
In salfeld and Family Link you can set downtimes, for times where you want a break for "school" or for bedtime, and only allow access to specific apps. you have to set up access in each app. You can also set max times for each app and max time per day for your phone entirely. I'd recommend Family link for hard limits, like if you want a mandated school break from 9-3 to do chores and work, and use Salfeld for periods that you are okay with being more flexible.
You can use the extensions you earn by playing kids games and watching shows to use your phone a little more. Its nice for "just five more minutes of my show!" type moments, or when you need to deal with something thats actually important.
Also, the security tab has options for hardening salfeld and making sure that it's harder to remove. turn on most of them.
I'd also recommend removing access to search engines, and downloading KidzSearch. Its been more than functional for everything I've needed to look for, and has very strict content filters.
When you are all done, you can use Salfelds self protection feature to lock itself for a period of time for up to a month and the app "time lock for images" allows you to lock an image for up to 999 days. Probably too extreme off the bat, but an option. Start with a day or two to see if you like your settings, them move up.
These are some of the things I've found so far for doing parental control play solo. Have fun!