How to Monitor Pinwheel Devices

How do I set up Bark on Pinwheel devices?

STEP 1: Determine whether you already have a Bark account.

• If you already have a Bark account, go right to Step 2 below.
• If you don't already have a Bark account, sign up here!

STEP 2: Once you've gotten a Bark account created, make sure you've added a child in Bark. You get unlimited children and devices with your Bark subscription, so feel free to add the whole squad!

STEP 3: In a new browser window, log into your Pinwheel Caregiver Portal > Apps > search Bark > toggle on the Bark app. This installs the Bark app on your child's Pinwheel device. Make sure you have Bark allowed for all "modes."

STEP 4: Open the Bark for Kids app on your child's Pinwheel device.

STEP 5: Log into Bark Kids with a Device Code. You can find device codes in your Bark Account Settings on a parent device.

STEP 6: Accept the permissions prompted on the Bark Kids app (for more information on what this looks like, reference the last half of this article).

STEP 7: Once it is set up, tap on the bottom right ⚙️ icon, and select Test Monitoring. You can now exit back to the home screen (do not log out of the Bark for Kids app) and set your child's device aside.

STEP 8: Repeat for any other Pinwheel devices your children may have. 

How can I tell if Bark is monitoring the Pinwheel device?

Navigate to your child's profile > Monitoring > scroll down to the Pinwheel phone and look at the symbols:

• ✅ means all is well.
• ❗ means something is not working properly and further action is needed on your part. Click on it to fix it!

What does Bark monitor on Pinwheel devices?

Pinwheel devices have no browsers, email clients, games, nor social media. For a list of apps Pinwheel allows on their devices, click here. A caregiver can then decide which of those apps get installed on their child's Pinwheel device through the Pinwheel Caregiver Portal.

After following our setup instructions below, Bark will monitor the following on Pinwheel:

• Texting content (SMS and MMS)
• Saved photos and videos (camera roll, screenshots, downloaded pictures)
• Dropbox (documents)*
• Gmail (emails)*
• Google Drive (documents)*
• GroupMe (text and picture chats)*
• Messenger Kids (text chats)
• Outlook (emails, attachments)*
• OneDrive (documents)*
• Skype (text chats)
  
• Slack (text chats)
• Spotify (song lyrics)*
• WhatsApp (text chats)

* After connecting the account to Bark with the child's login credentials by following these steps.

Bark's mobile screen time, filtering, and location-sharing features are not supported on Pinwheel devices. Because Pinwheel is a different type of Android device (it already prevents many apps from being accessed on the device), it doesn't need to use Bark's screen time, filtering, or location capabilities. You can ignore any alert you get about Bark's screen time & filtering not being active for the Pinwheel device. Following the steps above ensures that you still have Bark's content monitoring set up for your child's Pinwheel device.

(What is the difference between web filtering and content monitoring?)

Does the Bark for Kids app update automatically?