How to Keep FlashDroid Kid Running in the Background on Android?

FlashDroid Kid is the app on your child's phone, and it only works while it is running. It does not need the screen on and your child never has to open it, but it does have to stay alive in the background to apply the rules you set and to send updates to the FlashDroid app on your phone.

Android, meanwhile, has one overriding goal for background apps: kill them to save battery. Every Android phone does this to some degree, and most manufacturers add their own, more aggressive layer on top. When FlashDroid Kid gets caught by one of these battery systems, the symptoms are always the same:

• your child's phone shows offline in the FlashDroid app,
• Screen Time limits and App Blocker rules stop applying until the app runs again,
• the latest location stops updating, and arrivals at places you saved can be missed,
• live views and snapshots, including scheduled ones, cannot reach the phone,
• usage reports have gaps.

None of that is a fault in the phone or the app — it is the phone doing exactly what its battery settings tell it to do. The fix is a one-time trip through those settings on the child's device, and this guide is the map.

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Find your device's guide first

The settings that matter differ by manufacturer — sometimes radically. A Pixel needs two changes; a vivo needs closer to ten. So we have written a separate, screenshot-by-screenshot guide for each brand we see on children's devices.

These guides cover Android 12 and above. Where a brand's menus changed between Android versions, the guide has a section for each version, newest first.

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The three settings every Android phone has

Whatever the brand, the same three ideas come up. Knowing them makes any manufacturer's menus less mysterious:

1. Battery optimization

Android puts every app in a battery mode: optimized (the default — the system may kill it), restricted (killed aggressively), or unrestricted (left alone). FlashDroid Kid needs unrestricted. On most phones this lives under Settings → Apps → FlashDroid Kid → Battery.

2. Background data

An app that survives in the background still needs the network to report to you. Background data and — on phones that have it — unrestricted data usage (so Data Saver does not cut it off) should both be on for FlashDroid Kid.

3. The manufacturer's own app killer

This is the one that catches people out. Samsung has sleeping apps, Xiaomi has Autostart, Huawei has App launch, vivo and OPPO have auto-launch and background power controls. These are separate from Android's own battery optimization and are usually on by default. The brand guides above walk through each one with screenshots.

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Two habits that undo all of it

Force-stopping the app. If your child opens Recents and swipes FlashDroid Kid away, or force-stops it from Settings, some manufacturers treat that as permission to keep it closed. The FlashDroid app alerts you when the phone goes offline or shows signs of tampering, so those alerts are worth acting on.

System updates. A major Android or manufacturer OS update can quietly reset these settings to their defaults. If the child's device starts showing offline after an update, walk through your brand's guide once more — it takes two minutes the second time.

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When it's set up correctly

Your child's phone should stay online in the FlashDroid app through the night, limits should apply at the minute they are due, and the latest location should keep updating. That is the whole test: if the FlashDroid app looks right for 48 hours, the phone is set up correctly.