Parental controls
Reading the watch history
In short
Every video a profile plays is recorded with a timestamp and duration, visible only in your dashboard. Your child cannot clear it. It is scoped strictly to Watchly — no browsing, messages, or location from anywhere else.
What is recorded, and what is not
The history records which videos a profile played, when, and for how long. That is the whole scope. It is per profile, so a shared family tablet still tells you which child watched what.
What is not recorded is anything outside Watchly. No browsing history from other sites, no messages, no location, no screenshots, no keystrokes, no microphone. There is no device agent, so there is no technical means to collect any of it.
Your child cannot clear their history. This is a deliberate difference from YouTube’s own history, which a child can clear in about four taps — a fact that surprises many parents when they first go looking for a record that is no longer there.
Using it to tune the library, not just to check up
The obvious use is supervision. The more valuable use is curation, and it is the one most parents miss for the first few weeks.
After a week or two, the history reliably splits a library into three groups: a handful of things watched repeatedly, a middle group watched once, and a long tail nobody ever opened. That is a much better guide to what belongs in the library than any amount of up-front research.
Add more in the direction of the repeats, and quietly remove the tail. A smaller library made of things your child actually returns to produces calmer sessions than a large one they graze across — and it makes the library easier for a young child to navigate.
The duration data is worth reading too. Videos consistently abandoned after ninety seconds are not working, whatever their subject matter, and are usually better removed than left to clutter the shelf.
History and time limits
Watch history and the daily limit read from the same activity, so the history is also the record of how the allowance was spent — which sessions ran long, which days went over, and when extra time was granted.
If you are finding yourself granting extra time several evenings a week, the history will show that pattern plainly. That is usually a sign the underlying limit is set below what your family actually wants rather than a run of exceptional days.
Equally, if the daily cap is never reached, it is not doing anything. A limit that never binds is worth either lowering to something meaningful or removing so it is not giving you false reassurance.
Common questions
Can my child delete their watch history?
No. There is no clear-history control on the child screen. This is a deliberate difference from YouTube, where a child can clear their own history in a few taps.
Does the history include anything outside Watchly?
No. It is strictly the videos played inside Watchly. No browsing from other sites, no messages, no location, no screenshots — there is no device agent, so none of that is technically reachable.
How far back does it go?
History accumulates from when the profile started using Watchly. Deleting a profile removes its history along with everything else attached to it, so review it first if the record matters to you.
Can I see history for all my children at once?
Yes, and per child. The dashboard shows overall activity across the family as well as each profile individually, which is useful for spotting that one child’s viewing has quietly grown relative to the others.
Related articles
Time limits, breaks, and viewing windows
Daily caps, intermission breaks, viewing windows, and remote pause.
How the AI content filter works
Transcript screening across 21 patterns, and how to tune it per child.
Creating and managing child profiles
Add a profile, pick an avatar, set a birth year — and what each profile owns.
Try it with your own kids
The free trial needs no card, and nothing installs — build a library, set a limit, and hand the device over.