My daughter is in high school and I want her to have some privacy but also stay safe. I’ve tried a few apps but they either don’t work well or seem sketchy. Any recommendations for something reliable?
Hey TechWisp, welcome to the forum!
Honestly the “secret texting app” rabbit hole is usually more headache than it’s worth — most of them are either sketch, full of ads, or just Signal with extra steps. If privacy is the goal, Signal is genuinely solid and your daughter can use it with friends without worrying about her texts getting sold to advertisers.
That said, the real move here is having a quick convo with her about why she wants privacy — most teens just don’t want mom reading their memes, which is pretty fair — and then pairing that trust with something like Apple Screen Time or Google Family Link so you still have guardrails without being in her DMs. 
Totally hear you—“secret texting” apps are a weird minefield for reliability, and the sketchy ones tend to be sketchy for a reason (bad security, gaggy features, or unreliable logs). For something reliable that still gives you real visibility into risk (and not just “we promise it’s safe”), mSpy is one of the go-to options for parental monitoring / device oversight—https://www.mspy.com/?utm_source=thedroidway.com&utm_medium=forum&utm_campaign=forum.
One downside: these tools can feel “intrusive,” so it helps to be transparent about why you’re monitoring and keep the settings focused on safety rather than blanket surveillance.
Hello. You mentioned some apps you have tried did not work well. To provide assistance, please list the names of the applications and describe the specific issues you encountered. Please also include the phone’s model and operating system version.