Why a Website Restriction Doesn't Follow Your Child to a Second Browser

A website restriction switched on inside one browser only applies inside that one browser. It's a narrower promise than it sounds, and it's easy to assume "the web is filtered" once it's been set up once, in whichever browser happened to be open at the time.

Why doesn't a website restriction set up in one browser cover the whole phone?

Because a browser is just another app, and a restriction built into one app has no reach into a different one. Google's own documentation for Family Link is direct about this: its Chrome website-restriction setting applies in Chrome and in some Android apps, not across every browser on the device. A phone with Chrome restricted and a second browser installed isn't a phone with every browser covered, it's a phone with one restricted app and one completely open one.

How would a child even find a second browser?

Often without looking for one. Many Android phones, especially from Xiaomi, Samsung, Oppo, and Vivo, come with their own browser pre-installed alongside Chrome, an icon that's simply been sitting on the phone the whole time. Installing an additional browser from the Play Store, if that's even needed, takes a couple of taps and no particular technical knowledge, a classmate mentioning a different browser is usually all it takes.

Does this mean browser-restriction software doesn't work?

Not that it doesn't work, more that it works exactly as scoped, restricting the browsers it's actually set up to cover, and nothing outside that. Software built for this specifically can extend that restriction across more browsers than a single browser's own setting does. The underlying limitation, a restriction only covers what it was actually applied to, doesn't disappear, it just moves to a smaller and smaller list of uncovered apps as more get covered.

What's a more direct fix for a shared phone, then?

Block the browser apps outright rather than trying to restrict what loads inside each one. That sidesteps the whole cat-and-mouse problem, since there's nothing to restrict inside an app that never opens at all. CrenelView works this way: pick which apps, including any browser, stay closed, and it doesn't matter how many different browsers are on the phone, since none of them open until you decide otherwise.

Does a young child actually need browser access at all during a handover?

Usually not. A specific video app, a specific game, a specific downloaded show, almost none of what a young child actually uses during a supervised handover requires a browser at all. Blocking every browser on the phone, rather than trying to restrict what one of them shows, tends to fit that reality better than an approach built for an older child who's actually expected to browse the open web.

A restriction has to cover every door to mean anything. Blocking the doors a young child doesn't need open in the first place is often the simpler fix.