Every product page on this site argues for the product. This one is the other half, and it exists because you are being asked to trust an unfamiliar company with something that matters. Here is what ChannelKeep does not do, in our own words, before you find out later.
YouTube's ads still play
This app is not ad-free, and neither is YouTube Kids. Videos play through YouTube, which means YouTube's advertising plays with them.
We could not remove them even if we wanted to: YouTube's terms of service forbid it, and any app that strips ads from YouTube content is one enforcement action away from ceasing to work — usually without warning, and usually after you have paid for a year. If you want YouTube without ads, the only durable answer is a YouTube Premium subscription, which works at the account level no matter which app the video is watched in.
Be suspicious of any product in this category that claims otherwise.
Nobody screens the videos before your child sees them
You choose channels. Every video those channels publish becomes available in your child's app, including the one they post tomorrow that none of us has seen.
This is a genuine advantage YouTube Kids has over us. Its catalogue is verified for children before anything enters it. Ours is verified by you, once, at the channel level — which is why it can reach creators YouTube Kids cannot, and also why it carries a risk YouTube Kids does not.
What you get instead is a much smaller surface. There is no recommendation engine to carry your child somewhere unexpected, no Shorts feed, no search into the wider platform, and no comments. If a channel you trust posts something you would rather they had not, you block that individual video from the parent app and it disappears from their app. But that is a correction after the fact, not a review before it.
iOS only
Both apps are iPhone and iPad. There is no Android version, no web player, and no TV app. If your child watches on an Android tablet, ChannelKeep is not your answer today — YouTube Kids' own Approved content only mode is free, works on Android, and is the closest equivalent.
It is not a boundary if the real YouTube app is still there
This is the limitation most worth understanding, because it defeats the whole purpose when it is missed.
ChannelKeep governs what happens inside ChannelKeep. If the main YouTube app is installed on the same device and your child can open it, then what you have bought is a better place to watch — not a limit on what can be watched. The same is true of YouTube Kids, of every parental-control app, and of every browser extension.
Making it a boundary is a separate job, and it is one we do not do for you: it means removing or restricting YouTube on that device. We have written up how, for iPad and for iPhone, including the parts that do not work.
There are no child accounts, so history is per device
We hold no name, no age, and no profile for any child. That is a deliberate design decision and the thing we are proudest of.
It costs you something real. Watch history and screen time attach to a device, not to a person, so a tablet two siblings share produces one merged history and one shared limit. If you need per-child reporting, we do not have it, and building it would mean building the database of children we chose not to build. You can give each device its own channel list, which handles most of what families actually want from this — but it is not the same thing.
It costs money, and free options exist
$4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. Meanwhile YouTube Kids' Approved content only mode is free, and a supervised Google account is free.
We think the paid thing is better for a specific child — one old enough to find a children's catalogue insulting, too young for the open platform — and we have written the honest comparison and the full survey of alternatives, free ones included rather than hoping you do not look. If a free option does the job for your family, use it.
What we will not do later
Not limitations, but commitments, so they can be held against us: no advertising to children, ever. No selling or sharing of family data. No recommendation engine, and no feed designed to extend a session — that is the product, not a setting.