Review: Does Canopy Work Well on iPhones?
Canopy can be enforced on an iPhone, but it focuses less on monitoring and might not be the best option for parents to consider.
If you are considering using the Canopy app on iPhone to block inappropriate content and monitor activity, it's helpful to know about any limitations upfront. We’ve thoroughly tested the Canopy app on iPhone ourselves and have seen where the app excels and also where it falls short. In this guide, we'll help you determine if Canopy is a good solution
In our opinion, Canopy is a better fit if you’d prefer an approach that actively blocks adult content, but you don’t necessarily care too much about monitoring the iPhone you’re setting up. Parents or accountability partners may need to consider additional approaches if it’s more important to review more activity later. For example, apps like LivingRoom for Families use screenshot monitoring to provide full visibility into all activity on an iPhone, including the contents of private messages on social media apps that are normally not visible to parental monitoring apps.
How Canopy Works on iPhones
Regardless of which type of device you’re using, Canopy works largely the same. Once installed and configured, it scans your device’s internet connection and scans images before they have a chance to load on your device (on a web browser, for example). Canopy does this for both websites and some apps, with blocked images appearing blank.
This is slightly different from full screenshot monitoring, which captures and scans the entire screen on a given device. Screenshot monitoring is our recommended approach if you’d like to monitor a kid’s iPhone instead of setting up screen accountability for an adult.
To set up Canopy on an iPhone, you’ll install an app called Canopy Shield. This is the app that is actually used to configure your device and enforce protections. This app sets up a VPN on your device that allows it to scan that iPhone’s internet traffic, and it can also be used to track the iPhone’s location and even manage Screen Time.
Parents or accountability partners can manage restrictions for anyone added to their Canopy account either by logging into Canopy’s website or by downloading the Canopy app (not to be confused with Canopy Shield). The account owner might install the Canopy app on their own device (without the Canopy Shield app) to manage restrictions and receive notifications without enabling restrictions on their own device.
Now, by itself, the Canopy Shield app does not actively stop itself from being deleted or bypassed on iPhones, so you would also want to enable Removal Protection.
How Removal Prevention works for Canopy Shield on iPhones
Removal Prevention is a special process that is required to prevent the Canopy Shield app from being disabled, uninstalled, or bypassed through conventional methods. This is a separate process that needs to be completed after initially setting up Canopy Shield on an iPhone.
You’ll need a few things before getting started with Removal Prevention:
Parents and accountability partners can access full instructions from the Canopy app or website like so:
You should see a toggle for “Removal Protection”; by default, this is off for new iPhones. Tap or select this option to access instructions.
From our own testing, this usually takes between 10 and 20 minutes. You’ll download a tool to your computer (PC or Mac), and plug your iPhone into that computer. The tool will walk you through how to fully enable removal protection.
The Canopy app should tell you that a device has removal protection enabled correctly.
Common problems with Canopy on iPhones
When testing the Canopy app on our own devices, we found that there were a few issues that are worth pointing out first.
(1) Basic Notifications for iPhone activity only
Parents and accountability partners can see some basic activity on iPhones that are being monitored. For example, you can see activity similar to screen time.
New app downloads or other sensitive activity also trigger push notifications if you have the main Canopy app installed.
However, Canopy does not currently record activity or send notifications if some types of potentially explicit content have been viewed on the iPhone. You will see notifications related to “Sexting Deterrence” if this is enabled on the iPhone, but an explicit search on Google won’t be visible. We recommend a different approach if you intend to monitor a kid’s iPhone instead.
(2) Canopy can be confusing to set up, especially for anyone who has never set up any kind of content filtering before
The most difficult part of using Canopy is getting set up in the first place.
We found that the easiest way to set up Canopy on an iPhone was to first install the main Canopy app. From there, parents or accountability partners can add a new profile for the person they’re trying to set up restrictions for. From the main Canopy app, you’ll find instructions to connect a device via Canopy Shield, and you can quickly tell if the device you’re managing is set up correctly.
Using a computer to set up Canopy Shield on an iPhone is also possible, but it’s often easier to use a single device when setting everything up. If you use a computer, you'll likely need to share a setup link via email or text message.
(3) Canopy requires the use of a VPN to function, and this can cause issues on some apps and websites
Canopy absolutely requires its VPN in order to function properly, and this can present some challenges depending on how the iPhone needs to be used.
For example, if the iPhone needs to connect to public Wi-Fi frequently, such as at school or in a coffee shop, you might need to resort to cellular instead. Many public Wi-Fi networks deliberately block devices that appear to be using a VPN, whether it be Canopy or something else.
Another common problem you might find when researching online is that, depending on where you live, internet speed might be much slower on your device after setting up Canopy. In the United States, you’ll often have good speeds, but in other countries, coverage is more limited.
(4) Canopy Blocks Nudity by default, but additional steps are required to block images with swimsuits or lingerie
We noticed this problem when testing how effective Canopy is at identifying and blocking potential explicit content. Many parents might want to block content like swimsuits or lingerie, and while Canopy can block these kinds of images, you often have to enable it separately.
The default setting for most apps and websites is to block adult content and nudity. Swimsuits and lingerie can also be identified and blocked, but this has to be changed specifically by the Canopy account manager/owner.
(4) Limited monitoring on the iMessage app
Canopy does have a feature called “Sexting Deterrence", which is designed to prevent potentially explicit images from being sent or received, but this relies on these images being saved to the iPhone’s Gallery or Downloads folders, so it often doesn’t work for social media apps.
On iPhones specifically, certain permissions need to be enabled on the iPhone being monitored, so you’ll need to borrow the physical device to enable them properly first. These permissions could also be disabled from the iPhone later.
You might consider additional approaches if your goal is to monitor text messages on a child’s iPhone more reliably.
Things Canopy Does Well
Here are some of the things we liked about the Canopy experience on iPhone.
Default-Deny approach for most explicit content
The default setting for most restrictions is to block nudity, so parents don’t need to worry about manually turning on protection for each app that Canopy works with. Additionally, parents and accountability partners don’t need to work nearly as hard to set up restrictions for apps that haven’t been installed on the iPhone, although in this case, you might keep an eye on notifications to determine if more action is needed later.
At Tech Lockdown, we call this the “Default-Deny” strategy, and we often recommend this for adults, especially. You might use this approach if you’re blocking social media, for example; instead of playing a game of whack-a-mole with new social media sites, it’s generally more effective to block social media and make individual exceptions. It’s even better to combine this with scheduling, because now you can create a setup that blocks social media except for times when it makes sense to.
Bypass Prevention is very difficult to disable, even for Adults
We tried most of the common techniques you might use to disable Canopy Shield on an iPhone, including performing a factory reset, turning off the VPN, trying to delete the Canopy Shield app, and even installing a different VPN app. So long as removal protection has been enabled on the iPhone, it’s not straightforward to just go in and disable Canopy.