Frequently Asked Questions

Youtube tutorial:

You need to grant Device Admin permission for Nicola app to work correctly.
In this case, your kid won’t be able to uninstall the app.
Turn-off this permission first in case you want to uninstall Nicola app.

1. Open Nicola app and turn it OFF
2. Go to Device Settings
3. Open Privacy (can be hidden under Additional settings)
4. Open Device Administrator
5. Choose Nicola and turn off the switcher
6. Go back to Home, tap and hold Nicola icon. Drag’n’drop it to trash icon to unistall.

There are a number of factors that influence reading detection quality in the Nicola app:

• clear face visibility
  • neither face (glasses should not be a problem though) nor camera should be obscured
  • person should sit in front of the camera with the average distance ranging from 20 to 100 cm
  • if the face is lost, you’ll be notified by Nicola
• stable head pose
  • when people read they’re normally calm and not moving much
• lighting conditions
  • too dark or bright environments may impact face and reading detection; it’s simple to check: take a photo of yourself using your device and make sure your face and eyes are clearly visible
• content
  • the more the content is close to a plain text the better is reading recognition. Thus, reading a book is better recognized than reading media content with lots of embedded pictures
• reading medium
  • it will be better recognized when a person is reading from the screen, although recognition will also work if you read a paper book on camera. In the latter case Nicola’s performance may not be at its best due to movements related to book handling and page turning
  • The bigger reading text area (e.g. screen or window size) the better for reading detection
  • currently, only left to right reading detection is supported
• device load
  • heavy load on the device (e.g. other applications loading the CPU) may impact the quality of reading detection

To achieve the bonus time award, a person should read for a continuous time interval and not be distracted frequently. Continuous face visibility loss is considered a distraction.

Nicola app on a mobile device supports both portrait and landscape orientations. However, it’s recommended to use the one that

• is convenient for device handling ( to avoid excessive movements)
• maximizes the text width (e.g. landscape), too short lines (like text columns) make people read from top to bottom leading to poor reading detection quality

Try to find a comfortable pose which will allow you to keep your face visible to the device.

By default, Nicola doesn’t allow a child to delete the app from the device without a parent’s authorization.

A parent can always remove the app using a parental PIN, but the child can’t.

Here are additional tips to prevent Nicola from being tampered.

• Use a separate non administrative account for a child to limit access to operating system features.
• Always lock Nicola parent mode using a lock icon in the top right corner of Nicola application.

• Secure Android Safe mode by using phone encryption or secure startup (available on Samsung devices).

!This feature is not reversible, so use it only when absolutely necessary!

Minimal system requirements:

a keyboard, a mouse, a webcam, 2GB RAM, Intel Core i5

Minimal system requirements:

Android 5.0 and above, CPU architecture: ARM64-v8a

1. Uninstall from Programs and Components as other programs
2. When prompted during uninstall, enter the parental PIN code

1. Do not enter any PIN and press Enter
2. OR click Uninstall button without entering a PIN

Youtube tutorial:

• MyPhone Hammer Axe
• Sony Xperia S LT26i
• Samsung Galaxy Tab E SM-T561
• Samsung Galaxy J7 2017
• Samsung Galaxy s8
• OnePlus One A0001