comotto for SupportersSafe

Editor's Review

NTT Docomo's comotto is a family-oriented service aimed at households with children, and this is the guardian's half of it. An adult installs this app, the child uses the companion app on their own device, and the pair are linked so the adult has somewhere to keep an eye on things and to adjust what the child's phone is allowed to do.

Being one side of a paired service is the defining fact about it. On its own the app does very little: it expects a Docomo account, a child's device already enrolled, and a Japanese interface with no alternative offered. That makes it a narrow product, useful to Docomo families in Japan and irrelevant to everybody else. A 4.2 average across a 500K+ install base is respectable rather than glowing, which is typical of paired guardian apps, where the friction of first-time setup dominates the early reviews.

Features

• Guardian account that pairs with a child's comotto app

• Oversight of how the linked child device is being used

• Settings an adult can adjust for the child's device

• Japanese interface built around a Docomo account

Pros

• Free to install for families already using Docomo services

• Keeps the guardian's controls separate from the child's own app

Cons

• Does nothing without a paired child device and a Docomo account

• Japan only, with a Japanese-only interface

• First-time pairing is the step users most often get stuck on

Questions people ask