FamilySafe is a content protection level built into the machine rather than into one browser or one extension. It works at two levels.

Whole sites. A site is allowed or blocked according to its rating. Some are blocked for what they are, and some carry a range, in which case the machine is served the part it is entitled to.

Inside a site. Where a site holds a mix, the parts above the machine's level are not shown at all.

There are four models: K, T, A and Unrestricted. Which one a machine is gets decided when it is built, and it is a physical part rather than a setting, so there is nothing on the finished laptop to switch off.

K, for Kids, is the most protective configuration, intended for younger children.

T, for Teens, is less restrictive, intended for teenagers.

A, for Adults, is ordinary adult computing, designed to block pornography, explicit sexual content and gambling.

Unrestricted applies no FamilySafe content restriction at all.

K, T and A laptops carry their letter inside a small rounded rectangle on the underside. An Unrestricted laptop has no marking.

Yes, for $149.

K to T when they hit their teens, T to A when they leave school. The machine follows the child rather than the child outgrowing the machine.

The rating lives in a small module behind its own plate on the underside. The chipset and the engraved plate are fused into one part, so what the plate says and what the machine does cannot come apart. The account payer orders a replacement, we cut it to that laptop's serial number, and it comes to you in the post. Two screws and it is done.

Nothing of yours moves, because nothing of yours was on it: your account and your files are in the data center, and the same sign-in works the moment the new module is in.

A rating change is $149, and the module comes to you in the post rather than the laptop coming to us. K to T lifts the streaming limit, which is the usual reason a family moves up.

We would rather tell you about the limit now than have you discover it in month two.

No. Hand it over and let them open it. A FamilySafe Bolt is already configured for its level before it leaves the factory, so your child sets it up themselves the way they would any other laptop, and it is protected from the first time it switches on.

There is no parent account to create, no app to install on your phone, and nothing for you to maintain.

A for most people. It is ordinary adult computing with pornography, explicit sexual content and gambling blocked across the whole device, and a headphone volume cap you can raise with a warning. Nothing about it is childish and nothing about it slows the machine down.

Unrestricted if you want no system-level content filtering at all. Nothing is filtered and nothing is printed on the underside.

The reason to choose A over Unrestricted is not that you cannot be trusted. It is that the rating is physical, so it holds on the night you would rather it did not.

Yes, for $149.

The rating is a physical thing rather than a setting: a FamilySafe chipset fused to the engraved plate that names it, together in one small module behind a cover on the underside.

The account payer orders the new module and we build it for that laptop alone, keyed to its serial number. It arrives in the post, you undo two screws, swap it, and put the screws back. The laptop never leaves the house and there is nothing to arrange.

Your account and your files are untouched because they were never on the laptop in the first place: they are in the data center, and signing in afterwards works exactly as it did.

No. FamilySafe is designed to reduce exposure to content outside the level you choose, and it is an aid rather than a guarantee. No filtering system catches everything. Some content that should be blocked will get through, and some appropriate content will be blocked by mistake.

It is not a substitute for a parent knowing what a child is doing. We would rather tell you that now than have you discover it later.

Not when we ship. Music, film and television catalogues mix everything together, and there is no way for us to tell one track or one title from another from outside the service, so K and T block them entirely at first.

The plan is to line a Bolt's rating up with the ratings the industry already uses: G films with TV-Y and TV-Y7 shows and clean songs on K, PG and PG-13 films with TV-PG and TV-14 shows on T, and R films, TV-MA shows and explicit songs on A. That needs agreements with the providers that we do not have yet, so there is no date to give you.

If streaming on a child's laptop matters, this is worth knowing before you choose K or T rather than after it arrives.

A tool we will put on this site. You type in a website, one at a time, and it tells you which of the four ratings can reach it: whether a K Bolt opens it, whether a T Bolt does, and so on down to Unrestricted.

It is there so you can look up the sites your family actually uses, the school portal, the games, the streaming services, before deciding which version of the machine you want.

Three things are U. Pages carrying pornography or explicit sexual content. Pages carrying gambling. And pages that have not been classified at all.

The last one matters most. A page nobody has rated is treated as U rather than waved through, so a Bolt built at K, T or A will not open it. The rule fails closed on purpose: an unknown page is never assumed to be harmless.

The practical effect is that a K or T machine reaches a smaller web than an adult one, and a brand new site is unavailable to a child until it has been rated. We would rather explain that than explain the alternative.

Yes, on the K, T and A models. Loud headphones damage hearing quietly, over years, and a child has no way of knowing it is happening.

K is capped at the level health bodies recommend for children. T sits a little higher. A is capped by default and can be raised, with a warning shown when you do. An Unrestricted Bolt has no cap at all.

The exact levels are still being set and we will publish them before Bolt ships rather than quoting a number we have not tested.

Not on a K or T Bolt. The cap is part of the model, like the content filtering, so there is no setting to turn it off and nothing to argue about. Those models will not send sound to anything except Bolt Wi-Fi Headphones, which take the cap from the laptop and keep it, so there is nothing to plug in that could undo it.

On an A Bolt it is different, and worth being straight about. A pairs with any headphones you like, and headphones with their own amplifier and volume dial can add loudness after the fact that Bolt cannot reach inside and stop. A is capped by default, and that cap makes a damaging level much harder to reach, not impossible.

So the short answer depends on the rating. If a hard limit is the reason you are choosing FamilySafe, K and T are the ones that give you one.

No. K and T models only send sound to Bolt Wi-Fi Headphones. No other headphone, earbud or speaker will pair with them.

That is what makes the volume cap real. Bolt controls how loud a signal it sends, but other headphones have their own amplifier and can add loudness after the fact, so a cap that stops at the laptop is not a cap at all.

The built-in speakers work on every model and are capped the same way, so nothing about the machine waits on anything else.

Because they are the only headphones that take the volume cap from the laptop and keep it. Any other pair has its own amplifier and its own volume dial, and no laptop can reach inside them to stop that.

It is a limit of how headphones work rather than a rule we invented. On a K or T machine the built-in speakers are capped the same way, so nothing waits on buying anything.

No. FamilySafe blocks, it does not report. There is no history, no summary email and no activity log for anyone to read.

If a record of what your child did online is what you are after, FamilySafe is not the product for that, and we would rather say so before you buy one than after.

No, and that is deliberate rather than an oversight.

A FamilySafe Bolt is not tied to a parent account. There is no dashboard, no pairing, no activity history, no screen viewing and no location following, because there is no account linking the two machines together. Location belongs to whoever signs in to that Bolt, and to nobody else.

The protection is in the hardware instead. You made the decision that mattered when you chose the level, and the laptop keeps to it whether or not anyone is watching.

Yes. You can hand a child a sealed box and let them do the whole thing themselves. It comes up, asks for a sign-in, and once they are in it is theirs.

What they sign in with is made elsewhere. Before the box is opened, whoever pays creates the account on an A or U Bolt, or on any other computer, and hands over the screen name and a temporary password the child changes on first use. A school or an employer does the same thing with a seat at the K or T level.

So the machine can be set up by a child; it just cannot mint the account it is being set up with. It also will not accept a transfer of payer status onto whoever is using it.

Without that, the rest of FamilySafe would have an obvious way out: a teenager who could become the payer could raise the plan, order a module, and re-rate the laptop in front of them. Setting the machine up is fine. Becoming the person who controls it is not.

The account they sign in with can also carry a cap, which is set for you when the machine is first registered. A K machine makes a K-capped account without anybody having to decide anything.

A level the account may not exceed, chosen by whoever pays for it.

It is set when the account is created. The payer is already there deciding who the account is for, so the cap is one field in that flow rather than something inferred later from whichever machine happened to be used first. Making an account for a nine-year-old and making one for yourself are different acts, and this is where that difference is recorded. An account with no cap is the ordinary case.

A capped account signs in anywhere. Any Bolt, on any plan, in any house. The machine runs at the capped level for that session — same filtering, same volume limit — whatever the plate on its underside says. A child can use a grandparent’s laptop or one at the library and it behaves as their own does.

What holds the cap in place is not where you can sign in. It is that a capped account cannot become its own payer, and only a payer can lift a cap.

Whoever pays for the account the machine is registered to, from an A or U machine.

Both halves matter. A module is sold against a serial number rather than to a person, so you cannot buy an A module for a laptop that is not yours. And it cannot be bought from the machine being changed, so a teenager cannot order a new rating for the K machine they are sitting at.

Lowering a rating is different: it costs nothing and needs no purchase, because a machine becoming more restricted is not something we need to police.

The rating is checked where the computing happens, not on the laptop.

A Bolt does not report its own rating and get believed. The data center holds the rating on file for that serial number, checks it against the cap on the account signing in, and refuses to start the session if the two do not agree.

So a module fitted without a purchase record changes what the plate says and nothing else. The plate and the chipset are fused precisely so the two cannot disagree, and the record in the data center is what actually decides.

Yes, once the current payer releases it.

Without that step the rest comes apart in four moves: make an account on somebody else’s A machine, become your own payer, re-register your own laptop to that account, buy the module. Each step is allowed on its own, and the result is a rating a parent never agreed to.

The release is also the ordinary path for selling a Bolt or handing one down, so it is not a restriction so much as the moment ownership actually changes.

Yes, and it is worth saying plainly.

Somebody with their own money can buy a second-hand A-rated Bolt and create an account on it. Nothing here prevents that, and nothing reasonably could: it is the same barrier as buying any other computer.

What these rules cover is the machine you bought and the account you pay for. Within that, a rating cannot be raised without you, a cap cannot be lifted from a capped machine, and a laptop cannot be moved to somebody else’s account behind your back. We would rather describe that boundary accurately than claim a completeness we do not have.

No. The hardware is yours outright and the module is part of it.

Stopping payment ends the computing subscription, which is what makes the machine fast. It does not reach into a laptop you own and change what it is rated. A K machine stays a K machine, and an A machine stays an A machine, whether or not anybody is paying us anything.

Yes. Settings has a one-press lift with a length attached: an hour, an evening, a day. It ends on its own.

It exists because the alternative is worse. A parent who wants an hour raises the cap properly, means to put it back, and does not — a permanent change made for a temporary reason is the commonest way a protection quietly disappears.

Two things it does not do, and the screen says both before you press it. It applies to higher-rated machines on your own plan and nobody else’s. And it does not touch the hardware rating: a K machine is a K machine for the whole hour. The lift raises what an account is allowed; it cannot raise what a machine is.

When the payer releases the account.

A released account has no cap, because at that point nobody is setting one. That is the path for a child who has grown up and the same path a school uses when a student leaves.

A capped account cannot take over its own billing, which is the rule the whole thing rests on: only a payer can lift a cap, and a capped account cannot become a payer. So the release is the payer’s to make. Nobody is stuck, but nobody promotes themselves either.

No. Recovery codes restore access to your own account after a forgotten password. That is all they do.

They do not change who pays for the account and they do not lift a cap. Writing your codes down carefully is not a route around any of this.

Yes, with one exception. The documents, presentations, images, code and data tools are the same on all four ratings, and so is everything in the interface.

The exception is Messages, which is off on a K machine. Everything else on a Bolt is limited by what a site is, and a site can be rated. A message cannot: the risk is whoever is at the other end, and nobody can rate a stranger in advance.

A rating governs what the machine will show you, not what it will let you make.