I built a short-video app for kids where every video is checked before kids see it (Android)

#showdev #flutter #android #firebase

I'm a solo developer in Ghana and I just shipped KidsTok on Google Play. The idea: short videos for kids aged 0-12, but nothing reaches a child until it has been checked. There are no comments and no messages. A parent PIN, daily time limits, and a weekly email to parents listing what their child watched.

A few things that were harder than expected: making the feed play smoothly on cheap Android phones, building an offline "travel mode" that downloads videos ahead of time, and checking uploads for duplicates.

It's free to download, Android only: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kidstok.app

I'd love feedback from devs who are also parents. What would make you trust an app like this?

Top comments (1)

Ahmed ZNOUDA • Oct 18

Congrats on shipping. Travel mode for cheap phones is the kind of real-world feature most people forget.

I'm not answering as a parent, but as someone building in a sensitive category (health) on Play, here's what I'd look for before trusting it:

Say who checks. "Every video is checked" reads very differently if it's a person, an automated filter, or both. One sentence in the listing and in the app, plus what gets a video rejected, answers the first question most parents will ask.
Make the check visible in the parent view. Even a "checked on Oct 12" line per video turns the promise into something you can see.
Who uploads? If anyone can, parents will want to know how creators are vetted, not only videos.
The weekly email means you keep a parent email and a viewing history per child. A short note on what's kept, for how long, and a delete button would go a long way, and Play's Families policy and Data safety form will ask about it anyway.
Kids learn a 4-digit PIN fast by watching. A delay after a few wrong tries helps.

How do you do the duplicate check, perceptual hashes on frames, or something lighter?