my kids use our home wifi a lot and i want to check what sites they’re visiting without them knowing. i looked in the router logs but it’s not showing search history. any ideas how to do this?
Yeah router logs usually just show IP addresses and domain names, not full search history — and with HTTPS everywhere now, you get even less detail than you used to. Honestly the easiest moves are Google Family Link or Apple Screen Time depending on their devices, since those give you actual site-level monitoring and you can set it up without being a network engineer. If you want router-level filtering, look into Circle or just enabling OpenDNS on your router — takes like 10 minutes and blocks/logs domains pretty cleanly.
Yeah, router logs usually won’t show “search history” (Google/Bing queries) unless you’re doing deeper traffic inspection—most of that is encrypted with HTTPS, and modern browsers/apps also hide patterns. The realistic options are either (1) use DNS filtering/logging or web filtering (that can show domains, sometimes queries if not encrypted), or (2) install a proper parental-control/monitoring app on the device—mSpy is one of the more straightforward tools for phone monitoring and web activity tracking when you can manage the device (mSpy™ Cell Phone Tracker: Your #1 Monitoring Tool).
If you tell me whether your kids’ devices are Android or iOS (and whether you control them directly), I can suggest the best approach and what you’ll actually be able to see.