Siyag/How to make an Android phone kosher

This is the full kosher Android setup, in the order the Siyag installer walks you through it. Most of the work happens on the phone's own Settings screens; the installer handles the technical part and tells you what to tap and when.

Step 1 — Download the installer on a Windows PC

Download the Siyag installer and run it. It bundles everything it needs, including the app that goes on the phone, so there is nothing else to install. Windows or Chrome may show a warning about software it does not recognise yet; choose Keep or Run anyway.

The installer itself is free. A license is required to activate Siyag on a device.

Step 2 — Turn on Developer Options and USB debugging

On the phone:

1. Open Settings.
2. Scroll down and tap About Phone.
3. Find Build Number and tap it seven times, fairly quickly.
4. You will see "You are now a developer!"
5. Go back to Settings and open Developer Options.
6. Turn on USB Debugging.

This is the standard Android developer toggle. It is what lets the PC talk to the phone during setup, and you can leave it on or turn it off afterwards.

Step 3 — Turn off Play Protect

Play Protect will otherwise block the install, because Siyag is not distributed through the Play Store. On the phone:

1. Open the Play Store app.
2. Tap your profile picture in the top-right corner.
3. Tap Play Protect.
4. Tap the gear icon in the top-right.
5. Turn off Scan apps with Play Protect and confirm.

This is temporary. You turn it back on at the end, in step six.

Step 4 — Remove every account from the phone

On the phone, open Settings, tap Accounts (or Users & accounts), tap each account listed, and choose Remove account. That includes Google accounts and Samsung accounts.

Step 5 — Connect the phone and provision it

Plug the phone into the PC with the USB cable and accept the debugging prompt that appears on the phone's screen. The installer then provisions Siyag as Device Owner.

Before it reports success, the installer asks Android directly whether the Device Owner permission was actually granted, and refuses to show a completion screen if it was not. If something went wrong you get told so plainly rather than being left with a half-configured phone.

Once it is done, you can unplug the cable.

Step 6 — Open Siyag and put the phone back to normal

On the phone:

1. Open the Siyag app and enter your recovery email. This is the address used later if you ever forget the PIN, so use one the phone's user does not control.
2. Turn on Accessibility for Siyag when the app prompts you. This is the piece that watches Android Settings and blocks attempts to tamper with the app.
3. Sign back into your Google or Samsung accounts.
4. Turn Play Protect back on.

Step 7 — Choose what to block, then set the PIN

Now decide what the phone can and cannot reach. Everything is opt-in — nothing is blocked until you choose it:

• Browsers. Chrome, Firefox, Samsung Internet, Edge, Brave, DuckDuckGo, Opera and the rest. Siyag does not filter web pages, so if the goal is no unfiltered internet, the browser is the thing to block.
• The Play Store. The single most important one. Without it, no new browser, AI app or VPN can be installed to work around everything else you just did.
• Social media and messaging — whichever of them you do not want on the device.
• Standalone AI apps such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Copilot.
• In-app AI assistants — the AI built into apps you are keeping, like Gemini in Google Messages or Meta AI in WhatsApp. This is a separate toggle because it blocks the assistant without blocking the app.

Leave everything you actually need switched on. Phone calls, navigation, banking, email and work apps all keep working normally.

Set the parent PIN last. From that point nothing in Siyag can be changed, and Siyag cannot be uninstalled or disabled through Settings, without it.

What this does not do

Two things worth being straight about, because they change whether this is the right tool for you:

• It does not filter website content. Siyag has no VPN, no proxy and no traffic inspection. It blocks the browser rather than cleaning up what the browser shows. If you want a working but filtered browser, you need a filtering service instead — see the comparison of kosher smartphone options.
• It does not survive a factory reset from recovery mode. The reset option inside Settings is disabled, but a hardware-key wipe erases the whole phone, Siyag included. No app on Android can prevent that. It also erases every photo, message and account on the device, so it is a visible and drastic step rather than a quiet workaround — and if it happens, you run the installer again.

Common questions about setup