How it works
What actually happens
No magic and no vague language. This page is the mechanism — for the tablet and for the computer, which get the same billing here because two of them is the normal case in a house.
The whole path, before any detail
Six steps. Four of them you do once per device and never again; the sixth is the one you keep coming back to.
Create your account
Email and a password in a browser. No card. Start here.
Download the installer for your PC or Mac
One file. It carries the USB tools and the child app inside it.
Sign in inside the installer
The same account. That is what links what you set up to your dashboard.
Choose the job
Control an Android device, or control this computer. Run the installer again later to do the other one.
Follow the wizard
It checks what is in the way first and says so in plain language.
Customise from your dashboard
Apps, sites, schedules, limits, the home screen, the remote switch — in any browser, on any phone.
Steps three and four are being built right now. Until they land, testers get the Android setup app and the computer agent as two separate installers, and a pairing code does the linking instead of a sign-in. Everything else on this page is what ships today.
Path one
An Android tablet or phone
Before you start
- A USB cable and the tablet in your hand. This is not done over the air.
- USB debugging switched on: Settings, About, tap "Build number" seven times, then Developer options, USB debugging.
- No personal account signed in on the tablet yet. Android refuses to hand supervision to anyone while an account is present — this is the rule that usually means a factory reset.
Why the reset is unavoidable. Device Owner can only be granted on a device with no accounts on it. That is Android's own protection against exactly the thing we do, and we would rather explain it than work around it. After setup you sign back into Google — or Amazon — normally.
The four things the wizard does to the tablet
-
It looks, and it tells you what it found
Model, Android version, whether an account is present, whether the OEM has a blocker in the way. If your tablet cannot be fully supervised, you are told here — at the start, when you can still change your mind — and told what it can do instead.
-
It provisions supervision
The child app is installed and made Device Owner. Android now treats it the way it treats a work phone's management profile.
-
It applies the restrictions and reads them back
Every restriction is set and then read back through the same interface the tablet itself uses. What you are shown is what the device reports, not what we intended.
-
It shows a pairing code
Short, expires in fifteen minutes, works once. Type it into your dashboard and the tablet is linked to your account.
Exactly what is put in force
These are Android's own user restrictions. We list them by name because a vague claim cannot be checked.
| Restriction | What it stops | When |
|---|---|---|
no_add_user | Creating a second user profile to escape the managed one | Always |
no_safe_boot | Booting into safe mode, where third-party apps are disabled | Always |
no_factory_reset | Wiping the tablet from its own Settings | Always |
no_install_unknown_sources | Sideloading an APK downloaded from a browser | Always |
no_usb_file_transfer | Moving files on or off over USB | Always |
no_config_date_time | Winding the clock forward to defeat a schedule or a daily limit | When you switch it on |
no_config_private_dns | Pointing the tablet at a different DNS resolver to bypass filtering | When you switch it on |
Two things we deliberately do not set
no_install_appsis not set, so the Play Store keeps working.no_modify_accountsis not set, so you can sign into Google after setup.
How we know this list is true. It is not maintained by hand. An automated test provisions a real supervised device, reads every restriction back through Android's own UserManager, and fails if any of the five permanent ones is missing — or if either of the two we promise not to set has appeared. If this page and the product ever disagree, the build breaks before the page does.
What the child sees
A home screen with their things on it
ParentProof replaces the launcher. The apps you allowed are there, large and plainly labelled. Nothing else is.
A clear answer when something is blocked
Not a browser error and not a silent failure — a page that says this is not allowed right now, so a child knows the tablet is working and can ask rather than assume it is broken.
A way to ask
A request goes to you rather than to a dead end. The most common cause of a defeated filter is a child with no legitimate route to the thing they need.
Apps and sites are controlled differently, and the difference matters
Apps: allow-only
Nothing opens unless you named it. ParentProof is the launcher, so an app you have not allowed has no icon, and Android will not bring it to the foreground. You are never chasing the next thing they installed, because installing it is not what decides whether it runs.
Sites: filtered, not allow-listed
You pick a family-safe resolver and supervision pins it, so it cannot be swapped on the tablet. Adult and gambling domains stop resolving for every app that uses the tablet's own name lookups — which is most of them, including the browsers inside TikTok, Instagram and Discord.
What that does not cover, stated here rather than discovered later. An app that brings its own encrypted name lookups — Firefox ships that switched on — is outside this layer, and a site opened by its raw address is never looked up at all. Both are still bounded by the allow-list, because an app you did not allow cannot open to begin with. Your dashboard reports, per tablet, whether the resolver is confirmed in force or merely requested, and treats "not confirmed" as "not filtering" rather than rounding it up.
Path two
A Windows PC or a Mac
Same installer, same account, same dashboard. This one changes the machine it is running on, so it asks for administrator rights once and prints every change before it makes it.
Windows 10 and 11
- A service that holds policy, running as the system rather than as your account
- A filtering resolver on loopback, with the system pointed at it
- The browsers' own encrypted lookups turned off, so the resolver means something
- Browser policy — the only place a rule about a path rather than a hostname can be enforced
- Network filter rules, and execution blocks on programs you have not allowed
macOS
- A privileged helper, installed once with your password
- A filtering resolver, set as the machine's DNS server
- Every step verified after it is applied, and reported as a tick or a cross
- An uninstall command that shipped alongside it
Never a cross hidden as a tick. If a step did not take, the installer says so and says which.
The uninstaller goes on the machine first. Before the agent changes anything, its reverse is already installed. A half-finished install is recoverable without us and without a rebuild — which is the difference between a bad evening and a lost computer.
Path rules reach Chrome and Edge only. A rule naming a hostname is enforced everywhere the system resolver is used. A rule naming a path inside a site can only be enforced by browser policy, so it holds in Chrome and Edge and does not hold in Firefox. The agent prints which browsers it covered when it runs, so you can read it there rather than assume. It is not on the dashboard yet.
Undoing it
Every installer has a reverse. The setup app can relinquish supervision and hand the tablet back; the Windows and Mac installers each ship their undo and install it before they change anything. You are never one bad step away from a device you cannot recover.