In the case of parental monitoring, these features come in handy help concerned parents keep track of their child’s online activity and screen time, alerting them if their child is exposed to potentially dangerous or inappropriate content.

In terms of supervising employees, the main purpose is for employers to do it get more detailed information about their team’s productivity or prevent data leaks by employees.

However, more people are now looking to monitoring apps for alternative uses, primarily to monitor their partner, as our survey shows.

Survey results

In line with the finding that most people look to monitoring apps to check on their partner or child, our survey also found that 83.3% of respondents wanted to monitor a single Android device.

Another 11.8% wanted to monitor 1–3 devices, and 1.9% wanted to monitor up to 25. The remaining 3% of respondents were unsure.

Price was a consideration for many, though almost 52% would pay more for a premium solution.

When asked about the type of device they wanted to monitor, 88% of respondents wanted to record on Android phones, suggesting that Android monitoring apps are most wanted.

11.4% wanted a monitoring app for both Android and iOS devices, while the remaining 0.6% skipped this question.

Most (50.6%) wanted to monitor all Android activityincluding more intrusive details like deleted messages and GPS location.

Social media monitoring was the most searched for single feature, chosen by 15%, followed by viewing deleted messages (11.1%).

More advanced features such as remote camera or microphone access accounted for 10% of responsesfollowed by GPS and geofencing (6.2%). Internet activity analysis, an important productivity monitoring feature, accounted for 4.4%.

It’s not clear which specific features were most sought after for different uses – whether for parental control, employee surveillance or monitoring a partner.

Methodology

The main purpose of this simple survey was to understand user needs and preferences when choosing monitoring applications, focusing on key points such as desired use cases, features and pricing.

The survey was published online on our website Android spy apps page, and the results were collected between July 26 and November 1, 2024.

Of the 862 participants who started the survey, only 686 completed it. Additionally, since the survey was open to all Techreport visitors, the population was self-selected.

The survey consisted of five multiple-choice questions with no open-ended response options. Participants could also skip certain questions, resulting in a variable sample size between survey items:

• Q1 (n = 669): What type of phone do you want to monitor?
• Q2 (n = 686): Would you pay more for a premium solution?
• Q3 (n = 676): How many Android devices do you want to monitor?
• Q4 (n = 678): Which Android monitoring feature is most important to you?
• Q5 (n = 666): Who do you want to monitor with Android spy app?

These different numbers of responses can impact the consistency of the data. Additionally, due to the limited sample size and multiple-choice response format, these survey results may not be representative and should be interpreted as suggestive.