GardionParental controls on TECNO and Infinix: what gets in the way and how to set it up
TECNO and Infinix are made by the same company, Transsion, and their Android skins are related: HiOS on TECNO, XOS on Infinix. Parental controls install on them the same way as on any Android phone. The difference is that the firmware unloads background apps on its own, and the parental control app goes with them unless you set it up. Below is what we saw on our own test TECNO and in messages from parents.
What the phone has built in
Models with Google services include Digital Wellbeing & parental controls: daily screen time and timers for individual apps. Family Link is connected from the same place if your child has a Google account.
Digital Wellbeing timers are changed on the phone itself, so a teenager can remove them. Family Link is more reliable because its settings live in the parent's account.
Phone Master unloads parental control apps
HiOS comes with an app called Phone Master, which cleans memory and decides which apps may run in the background. To Phone Master, a parental control app is just another app it can stop.
On 16 September 2026 we tested this on a TECNO running Android 13. When an app is force-stopped, Android removes its accessibility permission, and the app can't start itself again. Either the firmware's cleaner or the child tapping Force stop in settings can do it. The phone looks normal afterwards, but the limits stop working.
Setting up HiOS
Two steps on the child's phone. Open recent apps, open the menu on the parental control app's card and tap the lock, so HiOS doesn't unload it when it clears memory. Then open Phone Master, go to Auto-start management and turn the parental control app on there.
You only need to do both steps once.
The greyed-out switch on Infinix
Android 13 blocks some settings for apps installed outside an app store. Most often it's accessibility: the switch turns grey and a note appears under it saying it is controlled by restricted settings. On 30 August 2026 a parent with an Infinix phone got stuck at exactly this step and wrote to our support.
You lift the restriction in Android settings. Open Apps, find the parental control app, tap the three dots in the top right corner and choose Allow restricted settings. The accessibility switch then becomes active.
How to tell that controls have switched off
On TECNO and Infinix, controls usually switch off silently: the child deleted nothing, the cleaner simply unloaded the app. That's why a parent needs a signal from the server side. Gardion notifies you if your child's phone stops checking in or loses its accessibility permission.
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