How do I unlink a Family Link?

Can I unlock my child's phone through Family Link?

Is there a way to unlock my child's phone through Family Link? Can I do that? My child is a college student, and I'm trying to learn how to use Family Link so I can add their mobile phone to my plan. I want to learn, so if someone could please explain the process of adding a mobile phone, that would be greatly appreciated.

Asked on 3/21/18 by Anonymous. ANSWER. No, unfortunately you cannot "unlock" your child's phone with familylink. You will have to go to familylink to do that.

You will have to add a mobile phone at the store where your phone is activated. If you did not order a phone from Family Link (it is a new program that was introduced in November 2015) then you will need to order a phone and then activate it at the store that you purchased it from. Note: You will have to give the phone number and security questions when purchasing the phone. Be aware: The phone is not considered to be paid off until you register it with familylink. You should receive a PIN code that will enable you to unlock the phone. You should NOT need to have your parents help you activate it. If you do not receive the activation instructions, your parents or any tech savvy friends should be able to activate it for you.

Good luck! -Staff Answer Expert. Asked on 1/31/18 by jj.miller So it's like this: I called Family Link, I had to wait for a month for an appointment. I went, and explained my issue and they told me that they can only unlock phones from the App store, or a store or something. When I asked them why, they just said its just how we do it. If it's the only option, then that's fine. They unlocked my phone. But, I'm not quite sure what happens to my old phone. Does it stay locked? If it's locked by default. Does it stay locked on their end? I know that I can use my own phone to unlock it. I didn't understand that I couldn't call them and ask to have it unlocked.

How do I unlink a Family Link?

It has been a couple of months since the latest round of Family Link changes, which added unlink to the existing remove options.

The default link removal process was that you would need to go into your device's web browser and navigate to (or remember and use the old address) your unlink link. Once there, it would ask you to enter the six digit security code which is required to clear out the records.

This works fairly well for Android phone users with the newer phones running Chrome, Firefox, or Internet Explorer, because these browsers are generally more likely to have web-based login screens. However, for devices using some older web browsers or even web browsers on a smartphone, this is not nearly enough of a solution.

What about the Unlink option? One change which I believe will be of greater benefit than any technical improvement in how we remove links (and as we will see below, we should expect more changes in the future), is the removal of the Unlink option. Now, unless you happen to recall that Delete link in your old location settings page, that option is actually not enabled on the web version of the link.

If you do know what link was deleted and you know what delete link is, you can still reach it by following this path (with being the link text, so, for instance, your old Family Link with name of Family would become ). The delete link is always hidden and is rarely enabled, so most devices will likely never discover it even if they were prompted to enter the old link once. (If the phone remembers where you deleted that link, of course, you can access that link again directly from that prompt).

The unlink, in contrast, is displayed prominently at the top of the family link setup section of the web page.