Guys, I'm WAY down the rabbit hole on the Circle 1st Gen App and using this with Netgear Routers. To say this doesn't work well is an understatement - it is truly attrocious and there seems to be no clear path for support and no forthcoming solutions from any vendor. While Netgear continues to promote and sell this - and sell the upgrade for this - it just doesn't work. It loses track of time and resets limits throughout the day. It records history for devices being used for many hours while not recording activity for those same devices. It loses history very often. It doesn't block sites entirely - about 25% of the time, the devices with these sites blocked can still go to them. The Off-times also don't work consistently - the profiles with devices assigned to them that have off-times often allow use through the off-times anyway. Same for bed-times. AGAIN, SAME FOR BLOCKED SITES (beware). I can't tell you how many times I've found all of these problems, and more, occuring in the devices I'm trying to restrict. I've rebooted all devices and the modem - and the controlling device - many times. I've rebooted them sequencially many times. I've uninstalled, disabled parental controls and restarted/reinstalled the software. I've tried only using this with Apple devices, including the controlling device. I've done the same with Android. I've reset all devices at midnight to see if that has an impact. I've literally tried everything I could think of plus all of the steps I've found others trying.
I've tried Circle Support - basically, they had me re-do many of the things I've already done, but really wasted a ton of my time not getting anywhere. They knew of these problems, admitted they are very common, but had no real solutions. How do companies like this exist?
Some of the simple things that just don't make sense are, why does it lose track of time - both the router and controlling device keep perfect time, 100% of the time. This should be a no-brainer to fix. Why does it lose track of ANYTHING, ever - the data this is supposed to track is very linear and simple - this shouldn't take much to fix. Why does it track history but not activity for a device - shouldn't this be the same data? I don't know how this was designed or implemented, but it seems like quite a few basic, binary functions just aren't working and those should be the easiest to track and fix - if they really wanted to fix them.
The bottom line is, this function and software just doesn't work properly. And, it looks like software fixes and updates will not be forthcoming - the circle company is now openly admitting that they no longer sell and will stop supporting the Circle 1st Gen software. Is Netgear preparing updates for it separately, including the Circle 1st Gen. App or what is the future for Netgear Router based Parental Controls?
Circle wants you to buy their Circle devices and new, upgraded software that they promise will be a better experience. My question to NetGear - and this is particularly annoying since they are still promoting and selling these products that don't work - is do you actually intend to sell this and make it work or not. If so, then create some support paths, updates, fixes and help so we can make it really work - the promise of it is fantastic, but delivery is way below sub-par. If Netgear do not plan to fix and support this, then admit it doesn't work in it's current form, stop promoting it and disable it. Netgear should be truly ashamed of this lackluster implementation. I truly hope they'll fix it, because it is very promising, but it needs some specific and dedicated attention to be actually useful. Netgear, PLEASE ADVISE.
Model: R7900P|Nighthawk X6S AC3000 Tri Band WiFi Router
My experience is roughly the same. Functionality was always buggy at best, but since last monday it stopped tracking history and usage alltogether. Shutdowns and reinstalls did not help. I am down to manually blocking devices at bedtime 😞
Thank you for your explanation. I started the annual circle premium subscription last September via Netgear's orbi app. I trusted it because of Netgear brand name. But now I don't have any circle service now. Is there any legal action we can take to get back our money via Netgear?
Add me to the list of users looking for Circle app to be natively supported on an Orbi Router RBR850. I would think a $700 product like this would have parental controls
