​​Use of the isMonitoringTool Flag

Google Play does not allow apps to monitor another individual by collecting and transmitting personal and sensitive user data unless the application is exclusively designed and marketed for parents to monitor their children or enterprise management for the monitoring of individual employees, provided they fully comply with the requirements described in our Stalkerware and Monitoring Applications policy.

One of the key requirements laid out in the policy is the use of the “isMonitoringTool” metadata flag in the manifest file of all the version codes (across all tracks) of monitoring applications. This helps Google Play’s review teams appropriately designate these applications as acceptable monitoring apps.

The manifest declaration should be written as follows:

Based on if the application has a child monitoring or enterprise management with monitoring as core functionality, the values for the isMonitoringTool flag should be one of these values:

• child_monitoring = App caters to parental control and is specifically targeted at parents who want to keep their kids safe. 
• enterprise_management = App caters to enterprises who want to manage and monitor employees. 
• other = App that does not fall in any of the above categories. The Google Play review team will assess whether apps with this value qualify for any valid exemption categories.

The declaration is fundamental in maintaining the safety and security of users that have monitoring applications downloaded on their Android devices. As part of the review process, Google Play will evaluate if the application has the relevant string declared in the manifest based on the categorization presented in the app description (that is, a parental control with monitoring functionality declares android:value="child_monitoring"). Afterwards, Google Play will inform the user that there is a monitoring application on the device with a warning string through Google Play Protect. 

For additional requirements and guidance on monitoring applications, refer to the Stalkerware specific section link in Malware policy.