Or maybe you’re an employer who wants to make sure that all company devices are being used only for professional reasons. Whatever the case, you need a reliable spy app to monitor and control your target device. One of these apps is XNSPY. In one of the most detailed XNSPY reviews on the internet, I’m going to test every feature of this spy app.
XNSPY Product Benefits
XNSPY is a dynamic spy app with non-intrusive features that can let you monitor and direct the target device’s online activity without being noticed. Do you feel like your children are being bullied at school? Or maybe they’ve been incredibly secretive lately and you need to know what they’ve been up to in their social media and messaging apps? XNSPY ensures that you can find out all of these things with their app — and more. With this parental control app, you get access to your children’s SMS, emails, contacts, and more. You can even set an alert if an unwanted number contacts them, plus, with XNSPY’s location tracking and geofencing features, you’ll always know where they are. Or maybe you’re an employer? No problem — XNSPY can be used to monitor the company device assigned to your employee. From making sure they’re always productive to gathering important business contacts without fuss, XNSPY has many features to help your business. It even has a For Business solution so that you can seamlessly monitor several corporate devices at once. With XNSPY, you can now eliminate unproductive work hour habits and listen in on high-stakes business deals. Convinced? Go try it out now! Do you need more info to work with? No worries — this comprehensive XNSPY review will examine everything about the app in the section below.
XNSPY Review & Main Features
Here, I’ll take a careful look at the features that make XNSPY a worthy contender in the spy apps industry.
Dashboard
The dashboard is the control center of all XNSPY’s features. From here, you can get a quick update on the status of the target phone. This interface is the first thing that you will see upon logging into the portal. The immediate dashboard features four main windows: device info, account overview, calls, text analytics, and the functionalities tab. The device info contains the general status of the target phone, while the account info will have basic information about your XNSPY account, such as your license key and how many days are left in your subscription. Inside the account info tab, you will find Settings, Reports, and the Renew button for easy license renewal. In the Settings button, you can see additional functionalities that mainly consist of toggle and watchlisting features. You will also find an overview of your device profile. Your device profile is merely an extended version of the one you have on your immediate dashboard. If you scroll further down, you will see more analytics tabs, this time displaying the latest text message and location information of the target device. Although the dashboard doesn’t have the sleekest design out of all the software I’ve reviewed, it’s reliable enough and provides essential information about the target device.
Non-Root Features
Before we go any further, I first want to examine XNSPY’s claims regarding root access or jailbreak. Root access, or jailbreaking for iPhones, grants complete user control over the device. Most spy apps, even the leading monitoring apps, require root access for full functionality. However, one of XNSPY’s touted features is that they have functions that can work even without root. According to the XNSPY compatibility page, the only features for both the Android and iOS versions of the app that require rooting are the IM monitoring features, such as WhatsApp, Kik, LINE, Skype, Tinder, and FB Messenger. With WhatsApp, even changing privacy settings such as Last Seen won’t let your child hide something from you. Thus, features such as SMS monitoring, location tracking, and remote control should work on a non-rooted Android. With this in mind, I used an unrooted Android phone for this review. Throughout the rest of the article, I’ll be testing whether or not it’s true that XNSPY can work without rooting.
Reports And Analytics/Call Log Monitoring
Analytics is handy for gaining quick insight into the target device’s activity. XNSPY’s reports and analytics function can be found in the dashboard, within the account info tab, between the buttons for Settings and Renew. This feature seems to be available only for the Phone Call History logs, as clicking it will bring you automatically to that particular function. The tab contains a chronological list of incoming and outgoing calls, with other information, such as the contact number, call duration, and date and time that the call happened. Right below the title, you can also access the Analysis feature. It shows the top 5 callers for the year, the top 5 call duration, and a call time punch card. This feature should be handy in determining which contacts the target phone communicates with the most. Meanwhile, the Call Time Activity Punch Card is a visual representation of three factors: the day of the week, time of the day, and phone call duration. It shows how long the calls are and during which hours and days they happened. The analytics that XNSPY presents contain important information that can help you better understand the target device’s call activity. However, I found it pretty limited in the fact that it’s only applicable for calls.
SMS Monitoring
SMS messaging is still one of the most reliable means of conversation, even in this age of social media and instant messaging apps. This feature can be found on the functions tab right beside the dashboard, under the Phone Logs bar, and right below Calls. The Text Messages Log shows you all incoming and outgoing messages displayed in conversation form. Clicking the contacts will bring you to the conversation thread that the target device had with that particular contact. There, you can see the contact info, message contents, and time stamps. However, upon testing, XNSPY could retrieve only my messages from January 2020. And of that month, only the conversations from 7 of my contacts are available — even though I actively used SMS at the time with more than 7 contacts. So, either there’s a delay in data upload, or for some reason, XNSPY can’t read the other messages.
Gmail Monitoring
The email monitoring feature in XNSPY can be found right under Text Messages, under the Phone Logs bar. According to the live demo, the Gmail monitoring feature should display the email content, contact email, and time stamp. However, upon testing, XNSPY could not retrieve any Gmail data from the target device, despite the function being actively used during the testing phase.
Contact Monitoring
XNSPY allows you to see the contacts saved on the target device. This feature can be found below Gmail Monitoring, under the Phone Logs bar. My test revealed that XNSPY could indeed display the contacts list, which includes information such as the contact number, name, and an option to watchlist the said contact. Watchlisting will alert you whenever that number contacts the target device. For some reason, though, the contacts are displayed in reverse alphabetical order, and there’s no option to sort the display in a more logical way.
Internet History
This function is located right below the Contacts button, underneath the Phone Logs bar. According to the live demo, the Internet History feature should display the links visited and time stamps, the bookmarks, and the analytics. However, upon testing, I found that XNSPY could also not retrieve this information from the target device.
Calendar
Knowing someone’s schedule can be beneficial in a lot of ways. If you’re an employer, you can immediately see whether an employee will be available on a specific day just by looking at their schedule. You can also do this if you’re a parent, with the added benefit of knowing what your children are up to on specific dates. Simply go to the Phone Log bar on the left of the interface and pick the option at the very bottom of the choices. XNSPY calls this feature the Appointment and Schedule Logs, and it does display the appointments and schedules set in the calendar in chronological arrangement. The results display information such as the event content, time set, and the creation timestamp, although this was rather inaccurate in my experience, as you can see by the date “1970” in my screenshot below.
Social Media And Instant Messaging Monitoring
Social media and instant messaging apps are the most popular means of communication and socialization among teens nowadays. However, social media can also be dangerous. If you’re a parent, you may want to monitor your children’s social media and IM activities to keep them away from potentially harmful scenarios or people. If you’re an employer, you might want to monitor company devices to make sure employees are not browsing various social media accounts while at work. This option on XNSPY can be found right under the Phone Logs bar and contains other options for the specific app that you want to be monitored. Currently, you can choose Viber, Tinder, Kik, Line, Skype, and Facebook. As the compatibility page said, the IM monitoring features didn’t work for my test. I expected this though since I used an unrooted Android phone. However, according to the live demo, the IM message logs should contain the contact details, the latest message on the thread, and the time stamp. The messages should also be displayed in conversation threads, just like the SMS messages.
App Monitoring
XNSPY also allows you to monitor the apps installed on the target device. You can view the apps installed on the phone, restrict their usage with the Installed Apps button, and even view the amount of time spent on Screen Time. They’re right next to each other under the Messenger bar, on the left side of the interface. The installed apps show you the apps, version, timestamp of when it was last used, and the option to block the app. Upon testing, XNSPY issued a warning that blocking an app might reveal the presence of the spy app on the target device. This warning shouldn’t be a problem if you’ve legally informed the users of the target device of its presence. For testing, I chose the Volume Changer app. After using XNSPY to block the Volume Changer app on the target phone, the user shouldn’t be able to use the app anymore, but the block didn’t seem to work — the app could still manipulate the volume of the target phone. The Screen Time feature, according to the live demo, should contain analytics about which app is the most often launched, the longest used, and the total screen time of the device. But it also did not work on my target device, despite XNSPY saying that it should, even without rooting the Android phone.
Location Tracking
The location tracking feature uses the phone’s GPS signal to track the phone and show it on a map. This feature can be located right under screen time on the leftmost side of the interface. The location tracking worked fine in the testing stage, as long as location services was enabled on the target phone. The Location History Log was able to pinpoint the current location of the target device on a map. It was also able to pinpoint locations that the target phone had been in for the past few hours. Surprisingly, it also logged how long the target device stayed in a particular location, although the figure was inaccurate, perhaps due to connectivity issues.
Multimedia Access
XNSPY also allows you to access the target device’s multimedia files, such as photos and videos. These features can be located below the locations button, on the leftmost side of the screen. However, once again, these features did not work on the target device. According to the live demo, this feature should display the saved pictures in the photo gallery and even have indicators for the source, whether they’re screenshots, camera shots, or saved from social media apps.
Recording Features
XNSPY has various recording features that allow you to actively collect information about the target device, such as the Screen Record, Keylogger, Record Surround, and Call Recording. Located right below the Video option, the Screen Record is a function that takes screenshots of the target device whenever an instant messaging app is opened and used. Their features page states that it works with Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tinder. This feature wasn’t expected to work because it deals with instant messaging apps, which require root access. However, the keylogger, a function that should record all the keystrokes typed in the target device even on non-rooted phones, is also not working. I activated the Record Surround command, which is in the Remote Control option, and made two recordings that activated the mic in the Android phone. However, these files wouldn’t play upon testing, and the controls are even grayed out. Of the two recordings I made, neither played. The same is true for the Call Recording feature, located below the Record Surround button. XNSPY was able to activate the mic and make the recording, but these recordings also could not be played, with the multimedia controls greyed over.
Remote Control Features
Right below the Call Recording option, you will see the Remote Control feature, which includes Record Surround, Wipe Phone, Lock Phone, and Take Screenshot feature. As previously discussed, the record surround feature did not work for the Android test device. The Take Screenshot function is only for rooted devices, according to XNSPY’s compatibility page. For this part, I tested the Lock Phone feature. Upon clicking the feature, I was given a window to nominate a password for the target device. For simplicity, I used the numbers 111222. The log indicated that XNSPY managed to deliver the command. In the target device, the command was able to successfully lock the phone. This could be a handy feature in case you want your children to focus on their studies, or when your employee loses the company phone.
Alerts
According to the XNSPY features page, there are many uses for the Alerts feature: it can be used for contacts, words, SIM card changes, and location. This could be a handy feature, as you certainly aren’t expected to sit in front of a monitor all day to spy on your children and employees. The most practical solution would be to set an alert for when alerts are warranted. However, this feature did not seem to work upon trial, although it’s not included in the list of root-only features that XNSPY disclosed.
Watchlisting And Other Features
A watchlist is a type of alert that will notify you whenever the device triggers a word, contact, or location. These features can be found in the Settings option, right below Alerts. From here, you can add the said triggers to the list, and XNSPY will alert you if they’re detected. However, as you can see in the previous section, alerts don’t work on my unrooted target device. Other features, such as Toggle Features, Toggle Alerts, Device Profile, and Data Export, are pretty self-explanatory.
Unlinking
Lastly, I’ll talk about some trouble that I ran into during the testing phase, which is during the unlinking feature, which allows you to unlink the target device. Unlike other spy apps on the market, such as Hoverwatch, Qustodio, uMobix, and mSpy, I noticed that XNSPY doesn’t have an unlinking option in the settings. Upon contacting support, I learned that users can’t manually unlink the account from their device. This is obviously a huge issue, as well as a major inconvenience. You can uninstall the app from the target device, but the dashboard will still display data from that device. The dashboard will not reset until you contact support and let them unlink it for you. Unlinking will delete all the data from their servers — which means that this doesn’t happen automatically, even if you uninstall the app. To add insult to injury, this service has a fee. You get 1 free unlinking, but you will need to pay a $10 fee every time you want to unlink and reinstall the app. These factors are not only cumbersome but also costly, especially in the long run. If you’re a business monitoring the company devices, there’s a high likelihood that you need to switch devices or update several devices at once. The difference is even starker considering that not only is this feature free in other spy apps but that you can usually do it yourself as well.
Product Compatibility
XNSPY is compatible with the most popular mobile operating systems in the market, Android and iOS. For Android devices, XNSPY works on all devices with Android 4 to Android 11 OS. Some features require root access (such as IM monitoring), but they claim that most don’t (email, SMS, multimedia, etc.) However, there is no remote installation option, so you’ll need physical access to the Android device for installation. It also needs constant internet connectivity to send and receive data. For iOS, the app works on versions 6 to 14.6. Like in the Android version, XNSPY supports both jailbroken and non-jailbroken features in iOS. That said, for jailbroken phones, the app will only work if they have iOS 6 to 9.0.2. You can use features such as alerts, calls, ambient sound recording, IM monitoring, and control. For non-jailbroken phones, XNSPY supports all iOS versions starting from iOS 6. It monitors the target device using its iCloud account. There are remote installation features, but it’s only possible if the target device doesn’t have two-factor authentication enabled and has iCloud backup enabled.
Price
XNSPY has 3 subscription plans (Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly) and 2 price tiers (Basic and Premium). For Basic, XNSPY has a 1 month only subscription price of $29.99. If you are availing of the Quarter plan, the monthly fee is $13.99, with a quarterly bill of $41.99. If you want the Yearly scheme, the monthly price becomes $4.99, at $59.99 annually. The Basic plan includes the essential features, such as monitoring call history, SMS, email, multimedia, app control, etc. Advanced features, such as watchlisting and recording, however, are absent. For the Premium Edition, the 1 month only subscription price is $35.99. The quarterly plan is $19.99 per month, with a quarterly bill of $59.99. For the Yearly plan, the monthly fee is $7.49, with $89.99 annually. The Premium Edition includes all of the features discussed in the section above.
Ease Of Installation
Spy apps have a reputation for being a bit of a pain to install. This is because they require special permissions that regular apps don’t have and need more installation steps. In this section, I will examine how XNSPY fared during the installation on the test device.
Installation On Android
For the most part, the installation went smoothly for the test Android device. The entire process is outlined in the XNSPY guide, and the app provided clear instructions on the things that needed to be done. No remote installation option is available for Android. You need to have physical access to the target device for about 10 minutes to finish the whole process. However, other than that, I managed to install the app without fuss.
Installation For iOS
The installation process on iOS is vastly different and more complicated. If the target device is not jailbroken, you first have to download XNSPY to an iTunes-ready PC or Mac and run a manual backup via USB. This is obviously a lot more complicated. You can read more about it in XNSPY’s no-jailbreak guide. There’s a remote installation option, but only in theory. You can remote-install the XNSPY app if the target device doesn’t have 2-factor authentication enabled (which recent iPhones automatically have on) and the iCloud backup feature is enabled. This is because the app monitors your iCloud account, not the phone itself. However, in reality, you need physical access to the device because you would need to pass the 2-factor authentication and manually enable iCloud backup. XNSPY’s iOS installation guide will tell you more about this.
What I Liked
Comprehensive analysis. I found XNSPY’s analysis features to be quite good in presenting relevant data accurately and concisely for the features that had an analysis part, like Call Monitoring and Screen Time.Comprehensive watchlisting and alerts. I also liked the accessibility that these features offer, as well as the fact that you can locate them all in one place.Some advanced features work even without root. Perhaps the most redeeming feature of the app is that there are advanced features that work even without root. Things like the remote phone lock and location tracking services are handy features in an unrooted device.Knowledgeable and friendly support. I had to contact support a few times during the course of my trial period, and I’m happy to say that they were very helpful and knowledgeable.
What I Didn’t Like
XNSPY Reviews: Is It Worth It?
XNSPY has a couple of features that didn’t work out for me, but some did. My overall experience using this spy app is a mixture of good and bad points, so you should expect the same if you decide to try this spy app out. With XNSPY’s features, the essential elements — such as call logs, SMS, and some analytics — all work without root, which is admittedly very convenient. However, whether that’s enough to justify their price and misleading advertising is up to you. Have you tried out XNSPY before? Have you read other XNSPY reviews? How did you like this article? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
