Note: This article was updated on April 15, 2016.

With the increasing amount of available apps in the Play Store, as a parent, you may want to limit what your children are using on their devices. After all, the internet can get ugly really fast. This is why developer Pumpic has released Limitly, an app to limit how other apps installed on your phone or tablet are used.

Setup

Because of the nature of this app, setting up Limitly takes a few steps. Opening the app will take you to a screen where you have to type a 4-digit PIN. This is the password that will be used to unlock the app itself, in order to prevent unauthorized tinkering with its settings. Also, when an app is locked, you can force unlock it by using this PIN.

After completing this step, Limitly will show you a welcome screen with a description of the different functions available. Contrary to a lot of apps, this one also explains why it needs to become a device administrator. Since this product is aimed at parents who may not have a full understanding of what a device administrator is, it’s a good thing to see an explanation here.

It will also request to permit usage access, which allows the app to create reports on how often you use apps, how many times it has been launched, and other very specific numbers that will be explained later.

Features

Inside the app, the first screen you’ll see is called Manage Limits, which is Limitly’s bread and butter. It will display a list of all apps, their status (such as active, blocked and limited), their number of launches and their last launch.

Selecting a specific app will take you to a preliminary screen where you can get a report (more on that later) and, at the bottom, you can block the app or manage its limits. Blocking an app means that, for all intents and purposes, the app will be blocked, no questions asked. Limiting an app will let you specify per-day limits, where you can block an app a specific day, limit it by time usage (for example, don’t dwell on YouTube more than two hours per day), or block on specific hours (e.g. from 9:00 AM to 11: AM).

If you decide that your kid must not use their phones on a specific day or period (Sunday is family day!), then you can block the device altogether. Just go to Device Schedule in the menu, select your settings and the phone will be locked. Harsh, but it has to be done sometimes.

You can also categorize apps yourself. Just go to the Categorize Apps options, create your categories with the desired apps, and now, when accessing the Manage Limits screen, you can select your categories using the overflow option at the upper right corner.

In previous versions of the app, categorizing apps was rather useless, since the app didn’t have bulk edit. However, since it’s one of the most requested features by users in the Play Store, the developer finally added it. Now, when editing a category, you can also edit all of their permissions simultaneously. Sweet.

Bulk edit is also possible in the app’s main screen. Just long-press an app and then start selecting the apps you need, and you’ll be able to edit limits for all of them. I would recommend using categories, however, and get the benefit of not having to remember all the time which apps you need to block/limit.

Limitly offers a bit of personalization by letting you customize the messages your kid will see in several situations, such as when an app is blocked, when an app is close to its time limit or when the whole phone is blocked.

Finally, you can also see detailed usage reports of all installed apps through the Reports option. Things like number of launches, duration of all sessions, limits reached, and logs can be seen on this screen, filtered by day.

Options

There are a few options to choose from, but all of them are noteworthy. You can change your PIN, in case your kid accidentally discovers it or something.

You can also activate Quarantine Mode, which automatically blocks newly installed apps. If your kid decides to install a new app to replace one that’s currently blocked, you can rest assured knowing that the new app will be blocked too until you decide what to do with it.

There’s an uninstall button to make the process much easier. Since an app that registers itself as a device administrator can’t be uninstalled before removing said status, Limitly automatically removes itself as a device administrator before uninstalling.

General Impressions

Completely coated with Material Design paint and native elements, the app looks good and it uses a peach color that isn’t an eyesore. The app adds some really clever settings to make it more useful to parents. One example is quarantine apps, which is a neat idea that prevents unauthorized access to new apps.

App blocking works correctly under all of the conditions I tested. I’ve noticed that the app sometimes takes a couple of seconds to kick in, but after that, it won’t let you use a blocked app unless you input the PIN.

On a previously reviewed version of the app, there was a way to bypass the block screen. Pressing the home button while on the block screen, and accessing the app again would let me use it, sometimes for several seconds, and sometimes indefinitely. However, the developer updated Limitly and implemented a fix for this bug. So far, I haven’t found another workaround.

It is important to note that, in neither versions, I didn’t found a way to unblock my phone when the Device Schedule was turned on. You can restart your phone, but it will kick in after some seconds.

Also, I’ve noticed that the last update, which implemented a fix for the previously mentioned bug, slightly increased the app’s battery life usage. It’s not like it will drain your phone in one hour, but the app was constantly showing up in my battery stats screen among apps like Telegram and Twitter, which I use all the time. The developer told us that they’re currently working on a new, more robust way to implement app blocking, so I’m hopeful that this future update also brings battery life optimizations.

What we like:

• Descriptive setup process
• Granular control over app access
• Reports of app access and usage

Room for Improvement:

• Battery life usage is a little higher than expected.

Conclusion

Limitly is full of good ideas and neat features. Having an app enforcing limits on what your kids (or even yourself, if you have the discipline) do on their phones with such a granular control is surely great. The quarantine apps idea is really good and prevents your kids using recently downloaded apps. The setup tries to be as friendly as possible with a thorough explanation of what you can do. With the newly introduced bulk edit, it’s very easy to configure, and you’ll get the peace of mind that comes from knowing that your kids are not accessing apps that may hinder their performance in school or other activities. Give it a spin if you’re looking for a simple way of controlling the content your kid sees.

Download and install Limitly from the Google Play Store.

Sometimes games are really complex, with enormous worlds and massive storylines. Other times, a simple, yet fun mechanic can be enough to create an addictive game that can provide a lot of fun. Tappitt, just released at the beginning of April, falls into the second category, combining a fast-paced, challenging gameplay with several additions, such as multipliers and boosts, into a game that’s a worthwhile addition to your library.

Developer: Ludo Gear Ltd

Price: Free, with in-app purchases.

Features

The first time you play, the game will show you instructions on how to play. The premise is really simple: there are several circles, which contain red, yellow and purple circles. These colored orbs are constantly growing, and you must tap them before they reach the outer line. If they happen to outgrow your efforts, you’ll lose a life.

However, the lives system is rather peculiar. At the bottom, you’ll have a stack of red, yellow and purple bars. If you lose a life, a bar will be knocked out of the corresponding color’s pile. Running out of lives in any of the piles will end the game.

This is where things start to get interesting. There’s also a black circle that grows amazingly fast, and failing to banish it from your board will take a life of each color, which can be deadly if you are short on lives.

For each circle you burst, you get a point. The game lets you have a multiplier by touching four circles of the same color consecutively. This multiplier, fortunately, has no limit; so, if you play your cards correctly you can rack up an impressive amount of points.

After tapping circles for a while, you can get a boost. If you want to get a high score, boosts are absolutely essential because they increase your multiplier with each tap, regardless of the color. It also clears nearby circles, so not only it can help you increase your score, but also help you survive a difficult situation. You can speed up the time it gets to get a boost by bursting seven circles of the same color in a row. It’s not impossible to do it but it’s hard, particularly on smaller boards.

Also, the board itself changes its form after a while, keeping things interesting. These variations not only include the number of available circles but also from different shapes and even rotate to make things harder.

As you can see, there’s a lot of variations and different elements to keep you entertained. These situations can make for frantic, fast-paced games which can get very dramatic when you’re really short on lives and boosts.

Graphics and Sound

Graphics are really simple and straightforward. Fortunately, the colored circles spice things up, because the rest of the elements maintain a mix of black, white, and different shades of gray. This absence of flashy graphics at least makes the game run smoothly- essential for a game that relies on quick actions.

Tappitt avoids the mistake made by several developers that include only one song for their main gameplay. The game chooses between several tunes so you won’t get bored of hearing the same song over and over again. These melodies grab their inspiration from 8-bit songs from games of yesteryear. It’s a curious choice since the game doesn’t seem to be themed around 8-bit, but the songs are catchy and upbeat.

The most noticeable sound effect comes from tapping each circle. When you start chaining your movements and trying to increase your multiplier, the sound will get more sharp, indicating that you’re getting closer to your goal. Since the game is really fast-paced and there’s no time to look the visual indicator, these sounds are really helpful for knowing if you’re close to raising that multiplier, or even better, if you’re close to chaining seven colors in a row.

Options

Unfortunately, considering this is an initial release, some aspects have been left out in order to refine the core experience. There’s no Google Play Games integration, so there are none of the benefits that this service brings, such as leaderboards and achievements. We hope they’re added in the future since leaderboards would be ideal to increase the game’s replay value.

Also, the options screen is pretty barebones, with options to turn off sound effects, in-game music or to watch the tutorial again. I would like to see a way to lower the volume of sound effects instead of turning them off altogether because I think that they’re a bit loud, and lowering my phone’s volume will leave me almost unable to listen to the game’s excellent soundtrack. There’s also instructions on how to play the game, in case you access this screen before entering the tutorial.

A thing to note is that after each game, you’ll be shown a full-screen ad. Fortunately, there’s an in-app purchase to remove them, since it becomes really annoying after a while. Also, you have the option of buying boosts at a cheap price. Also, for some reason, the game is not available in Ecuador (my home country), so maybe the developer blocked access to the game in some regions. All of my tests were done on a preview release, which was virtually the same as the Play Store release.

Conclusion

For a game in its infancy, Tappitt manages to get a lot of things right. This game provides frantic, swift, and addictive gameplay, with several variations and alternatives to keep things interesting at all times. A seemingly forgiving lives system is balanced with black circles that are a latent peril at all times. The multiplier and boost process gives great rewards, but can be deadly if executed incorrectly. Smooth performance and great soundtrack round up a great game, which can only get better with future updates.

Download from the Play Store.