Circle Netgear vs Genie

Hi Gavin,

Hopefully I can help you out.  You do not need, and would not want to, install the circle app on any devices except a parents/guardians phone or tablet to manage the circle.  There was another app that was part of the circle service which you could install onto other devices that enforced the same filtering over mobile networks so this is perhaps where the confusion comes in.  That service is now only available as part of Circle v2 which is only available via a circle hardware device so I won't go into further details here (I'm not aware of any routers supporting v2 directly).

We use circle and the way it works is you place devices into groups and apply the filters/limits to that group.  As an example we have a group for each for our kids in which we place their own devices (consoles, smart TVs, tablets, etc.) to protect them.  We have another group for guests.

Individual MAC address filtering is not possible but there is no reason why you couldn't do this through additional groups.  As an example we might have extra groups for one child and place different devices (smart TVs and consoles vs. tablets for example) into each group to apply different filters/limits.

You are probably aware of this already but just in case there is a monthly/annual subscription required for circle if you want to use time limits, etc.  The free service is very basic.

Hope that helps.