[Fire General] tdcrone:
An Alternative Solution

I also gave my kids 3 Fire tablets for Christmas. My kids are mostly older (12,11,4) and the older two have had other Android devices. I went a different direction from the OP, which I'll discuss here for posterity's sake. This is a bit harder than the OP's method but ends up with a more conventional Android environment.

As background, I used FireOS on the Fire Phone for a few weeks, and ran into many problems. I installed CM11 on the Fire Phone and bought another in the final sale. You can read about that on the Fire Phone forum if you're interested.

Also, I've used Screen Time Parental Control for a couple years now, and while somewhat expensive it's great for monitoring without being too invasive. I can let the kids have a lot of freedom with their devices, without having to be worried about them either being on them all the time, or doing weird things. Screen Time nominally works with FireOS but in the end I did not use the tablets as-is long enough to try installing it.

For these tablets, I decided the easiest path was to install CM12. This avoided waiting for Amazon for security updates, and any FireOS incompatibilities, as I'd experienced with the Fire Phone. Also, the kids are familiar with CM, and frankly any replacement Android device will be easier in the future. After my experience with the zombie Fire Phone from Amazon I'm less concerned about CM/ggow/XDA bugs than I am Amazon's. :)

I decided to create separate user accounts for each child, as opposed to having both my Google account and the child's Google account** under a single user. I've done this before, but it's awkward to have to switch between accounts when using Gmail/Hangouts/Drive/etc., and sometimes things get mixed up.

Thus, for each of the three tablets I went through this process:

[I don't have the tablets in front of me, so if one of these steps doesn't seem obvious ask and I'll look up the exact names/buttons.]

1) Install CM12 using the well-documented methods

2) Boot into CM

3) Configure for my primary Google account

- Download interesting applications that have been purchased on my account

- Open SuperSU, enable multi-user access

- Open Contacts, select "ME", change name to "Dad" (or whatever)*

- Open File Manager

- Settings / Enable multi user access

- Open main Settings app:

- Set screen lock / PIN

- Users / Add user / OK / Set up now

4) "Switching to new user"

- Google Launcher always

- Log in with the "child's" account** in the wizard

- Open Contacts, change "ME" to the child's name

- Open File Manager

- Settings / Switch to Root access mode

- Browse to /data/app/

- Change into interesting packages and pick the .apk file

- Select "Install"***

- Repeat as necessary

Here I installed Screen Time Parental Control from the Play Store and went through the steps for Child device. Also any customization for the account should go here, then you can switch back to your regular user.

To switch user, drag down the system tray, pick the head image in the top right corner, and then the appropriate name.

Notes:

* This is in a wacky place, but this contact is how CM identifies the user name to display in the switch screen. If you don't see "ME" don't add it, just browse around; it's there somewhere.

** Apparently Google only allows accounts for people >=13. Thus, if you are reading from Google, know that these are my own accounts and my children happen to use them. :)

*** This will actually not re-download the application, but it makes a temporary copy while installing. Application user data is always separate between users, but for the most part download data is shared. For most applications things work on either user; however, Electronic Arts applications don't work with separate users, and Terraria will print an error (but still worked once the core data was downloaded with my purchasing account). I'm sure there are other apps that roll their own security and will be in this situation, but out of a very large family library these are the only apps with which I've had trouble.

Finally, a last note that Screen Time does not presently block creating new users from the system tray. In theory a youngling could create a user that would not have Screen Time limits, but then they wouldn't be able to delete it without getting in to Settings, which you should block anyway. Depends how devious your children are; for me I'm just waiting until they figure it out to do anything about it... just keep an eye on it if you go this route.

Hopefully this helps someone, eventually! :)

Best,

Tim