10 parenting hacks you didn’t know you could do with Google

If you are a parent looking for ways to maximise your productivity in your life, here’s Google’s range of family-friendly products such as Google Photos and YouTube Kids to help you to juggle work, children, and those special moments in between.

Stay organised with Google

1. Keep your life organised with Google Calendar

Have got too many things going on? Use Google Calendar to keep track of everyone’s schedules with multiple calendars. Colour coded calendars make for such easy differentiation – red for tuition classes and green for music lessons. You can also set up notifications so you’ll never miss an important event.

2. Meet the Google Assistant – Your very own personal assistant

An intelligent voice-powered personal assistant designed to provide convenience through two-way conversations. Simply say “ Ok Google ” and get it to find answers to everyday questions instantly — like “How do I get to the nearest post office?”, or even get it to sing Happy Birthday!

Manage your millions of family photos

3. Save every memory with Google Photos

If a picture is worth a thousand words, edit, share and backup your precious moments on one app. You’ll never run out of space with Google Photos’ unlimited storage. Let machine learning do the hard work of sorting your photos, and organising them so you can search by family member. Create collages and mini videos with Google Photos Assistant. Try it for Mother’s Day!

4. Preserve old photos with PhotoScan

Have piles of printed photos to walk you down memory lane? And, not sure what to do with all those old printed photos? With PhotoScan, you can turn them into digital copies within seconds. What’s best is that you can remove any glare, crop or edit the photos so they’re good to keep forever. Store and share them using Google Photos. 

Get a helping hand on homework

5. Search your way to the answers for difficult questions

It’s the exam season now. Find the answers to tricky practice exam questions quickly with a simple search query, like “What is half of pi?.” Use the Google Search bar as a calculator, by typing in calculations like “49% of 180” or even longer strings like “5*60+12/4.” Or simply ask a question like “How many islands are there in Singapore?”

6. Explore the world with Google Street View

Street View puts the world at your fingertips — you can hike the Inca Trail to explore Machu Picchu in Peru, visit the Taj Mahal in India, or dive Australia’s Great Barrier Reef — all in a single app. Pop your phone into a Google Cardboard for a virtual reality experience. 

7. Pick up a new language with Google Translate

Spark your kids’ interest in another language by translating foreign words and phrases into English – or vice-versa. Going on a family holiday? Use Word Lens on your phone to scan and instantly translate languages such as Korean, Japanese and more!

Give your kids a safe experience online

8. Show family-friendly results with Google Safe Search

Filter out mature and inappropriate content on Google Search by turning on “Safe Search” in your Search settings. Works on mobile devices too!

9. Educate and entertain with YouTube Kids

A standalone video app built with parents and children in mind. Limit your child’s video watch time with a timer setting. The parental control settings allows you to decide what kids can and cannot watch. 

10. Video-call your loved ones with Google Duo

No matter which country you’re in, stay connected with your loved ones with Google’s smart video-calling app Switch from 4G to wi-fi seamlessly without interrupting the call. You can also preview video calls before picking up with Duo’s “ Knock-Knock ” feature.