I’ve never used anything like this before and I’m not super tech savvy. Does it require access to his phone to set it up?
Yeah, pretty much any real monitoring app like Xnspy needs physical access to the Android phone to install it - there’s no way around that step, that’s just how Android works.
One thing worth mentioning though - if you share a Google account or family plan, you’ve already got a lot of info available (location sharing, Google Timeline, carrier call logs) without installing anything sketchy.
What’s actually going on that’s got you worried? Sometimes there’s a simpler fix depending on what you’re really trying to find out. 