Questions, answered properly

Yes, during the early beta. Any family can create an account, download the setup app and set up a compatible Android tablet, with every feature on and no card needed. You can set up more than one tablet on the same family account.

Paid plans aren’t available yet. Whatever comes after the beta, no billing state can turn protection off: the rules already running on your child’s tablet stay on.

ParentProof is open to every family now, free, while we keep building on it. Press the report button in the setup app or the “Something not working?” card in your dashboard at any time; it reaches us with the details attached.

Download the setup app on a Windows PC or Mac, connect the compatible Android tablet by USB, and follow the short provisioning wizard. The setup app installs ParentProof and grants Android supervision; it never asks for your ParentProof password or child settings. See every step.

The Windows or Mac app is a setup tool only. It prepares the Android child device; it does not protect the computer it runs on. Get the setup app.

Finish on the child device: connect Wi-Fi, sign in or create the parent account, complete verification or two-step sign-in, then create or choose the child and their rules. The device identity stays attached through that flow, so a successful sign-in pairs it automatically.

A QR code and a visible manual code are available when you prefer to continue on your own phone. They preserve the same device identity and return to child selection; they are fallbacks, not a required extra step.

You need a Windows PC or Mac once, to set up a compatible Android device — supervision is granted over a USB cable and there is no over-the-air route to it. After that a phone is enough: the Parent Control Panel opens in any browser and is built for one hand. The protected child device is a compatible Android tablet.

No. ParentProof protects compatible Android tablets only. A Windows PC or Mac can run the setup app, but ParentProof does not apply child rules to that computer.

Yes, from the same account and dashboard. The two are not identical: on Windows the categories and sites you block stop resolving for every browser and app, and on a Mac the family filter covers the whole machine but individual sites you name are not blocked. The remote rest switch is Android-only. Compare the platforms.

On a compatible Android tablet, yes. One toggle rests that device: the apps you marked essential — an alarm, a way to call you — stay reachable and everything else stops. Schedules do the same thing on a timetable, from the device's own clock, so they still fire with the internet down.

It is not instantaneous. The device checks in for its settings every so often, so expect a switch to land within about half a minute rather than the moment you tap.

The usual routes are closed: there is no switch in Settings, safe mode is blocked, a second profile cannot be created, the tablet cannot be reset from itself, and apps cannot be installed from a web download. Android enforces all of that itself, not an app a child could close.

What we will not tell you is that it is unbeatable. A physical factory reset through the recovery menu removes supervision — it also wipes the tablet, and you will notice. Someone with a computer, real intent and time can do things a filter cannot prevent. If your teenager is at that level, this is a conversation, not a product.

There is a switch for that: it blocks changing the date and time on the tablet. It is optional because on some devices it also gets in the way of legitimate things, so you decide.

It depends on whether ParentProof’s own filtering connection is running on that device.

On a tablet running it: Android runs one VPN at a time, and ParentProof is pinned as that one by the device-owner setup your installer performed — a child cannot swap it for a VPN of their own from the tablet, and with egress control switched on the VPN settings screen itself is locked. The visible sign is a small key in the status bar: that key is ParentProof’s filtering connection, it is normal, and it stays there the whole time protection is on. We describe the mechanism rather than promise an outcome for every device and every app on the shelf — test yours.

Where it is not running — for example while protection is paused or on a device set up without it — a VPN or private lookup service we do not control can get round website filtering. Blocking new app installs and locking the device to your filter reduces that risk; it is not a guarantee.

What does not change either way: apps are allow-only, so an app you did not allow cannot open at all. And test the exact device and apps before you rely on the filter.

The tablet stays locked down. Policy is enforced on the device; our server is how you change it, not how it is applied. An outage means you cannot adjust settings for a while. It does not mean the tablet opens up.

Not quite. Apps are allow-only: nothing opens unless you named it. Sites are filtered rather than allow-listed — you choose a family filtering service, the tablet is locked to it so it cannot be changed there, and adult sites stop opening. The list of categories belongs to the service you picked, and neither of the two we offer covers gambling, which comes instead from ParentProof's own list through the filter level you choose.

That filtering reaches almost every app on the device. It does not reach a browser that looks sites up privately on its own — Firefox does this out of the box — and a site opened by typing its raw numeric address is never looked up at all. Both of those are still bounded by the allow-list, because an app you did not allow cannot open in the first place. The full picture.

Not for adult content or gambling: the Standard and Strict filter levels block both, and ParentProof checks sites against its own list of more than a million, which is refreshed every day. Off blocks no categories. During a child's setup you can also switch on whole categories one by one, such as social media, streaming or shopping. Beyond that you block sites by name, one whole site at a time. The Categories screen for a child does not offer website switches yet.

The other half is the app allow-list: something you did not allow does not open at all, so there is no site inside it to filter. How the two fit together.

No, and this is not a policy we could quietly change — it is built into the product. Suicide lines, gambling self-exclusion, sexual health and abuse support are marked unblockable, and ParentProof refuses to save a rule that would block one. Only your own explicit rule about one specific address can override that.

Almost always one of three things: USB debugging is not on, the "Allow USB debugging?" prompt on the tablet has not been accepted, or the cable is charge-only. The setup app checks each and says which. If it still cannot see it, send us a report from inside the app — it attaches what it saw.

Press the report button in the setup app or the "Something not working?" card in your dashboard, and describe it in your own words. Technical detail is attached automatically, redacted, and only if you leave that box ticked. That is genuinely enough — you do not need to diagnose anything.

The support page explains how to hand a protected Android device back unsupervised; you can also return to Parent mode without removing supervision. The Windows or Mac setup utility can be uninstalled normally; it does not protect that computer.