Microsoft Family Safety

Microsoft Corporation

In-app purchases

About this app

The Microsoft Family Safety app helps empower you and your family to create healthy habits and protect the ones you love with digital and physical safety. Get peace of mind that your family is staying safer while giving your kids independence to learn and grow.

Create a safe space for your kids to explore online. Set parental controls to filter inappropriate apps and games and set browsing to kid-friendly websites on Microsoft Edge.

Help your kids balance their screen time activity. Set limits for specific apps and games on Android, Xbox, or Windows. Or use device management to set screen time limits across devices on Xbox and Windows.

Use activity reporting to better understand your family's digital activity. View your kids’ activity in a weekly email to help start a conversation about online activity.

Use location sharing to stay informed on where your family is. Plus, save frequently visited places like work and school.

With a Microsoft 365 Family subscription, get location alerts when someone leaves or arrives at their location, and use drive safety to build better habits behind the wheel. Get insights on how your family is doing on the road, including how many times they use their phone while driving, their top speed, and even the number of times they brake hard.

Microsoft Family Safety features:

Activity reports – Develop healthy digital habits
• Activity log of screen time and online usage
• Weekly email summary report of activity

Screen time – Find a balance
• Screen time app and game limits on Xbox, Windows, Android
• Screen time device limits on Xbox and Windows
• Get notified if your child requests more time

Content filters – Explore safely
• Web filters for kid-friendly browsing on Microsoft Edge
• Block inappropriate apps and games

Family location features – find family members
• GPS family location tracker: locate your loved ones
• Save frequently visited locations

Driving safety – Build better habits behind the wheel
• Driving reports to see top speed, hard braking, acceleration, phone usage
• Drive history to see driving events along route

Privacy & Permissions

Your privacy is important to us. We work around the clock to protect your data and information to help you keep your family safe. For example, we do not sell or share your location data with insurance companies or data brokers. We provide you with meaningful choices about how and why data is collected and used, and give you the information you need to make the choices that are right for you and your family.

With your child’s consent, Microsoft Family Safety may collect interaction data using accessibility, app usage, and device admin service permissions. This allows us to: know when they are using an app, exit an app on their behalf, or block apps that are not allowed.

Subscription & Disclaimers

Unlock the full Microsoft Family Safety experience with a qualifying Microsoft 365 Family subscription to enable location alerts and drive safety features; all other features are free and available to download with the app. Location tracking and driving safety require location permissions be active; drive safety is only available in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Spain, and Switzerland.

This app is provided by either Microsoft or a third-party app publisher and is subject to a separate privacy statement and terms and conditions. Data provided through the use of this store and this app may be accessible to Microsoft or the third-party app publisher, as applicable, and transferred to, stored and processed in the United States or any other country where Microsoft or the app publisher and their affiliates or service providers maintain facilities.

Ratings and reviews

Constantly get the "It's not you..." error message, which makes the app pretty much useless. All I use the app for is to control how much screen time and when it is allowed. Unfortunately the constant error messages makes it impossible to do so. When I don't get an error message it also doesn't seem to work properly. Giving my kids an extra 15 or 30 minutes seems to just unlock it for an indefinite amount of time. Even when it does work I find it difficult to navigate.

This app and the associated website consistently fail to work. Notifications will come in saying my child is requesting more screen time, but when I click on it and the app opens there's either nothing there, or it says "something went wrong on our end". Sometimes, if you're lucky, you can refresh it a few times and get somewhere. But overwhelmingly it's a frustrating exercise in futility. I hate it so much.

Something has gone wrong with the screentime database calls on this app. It's taking 20 to 30 seconds to load screen time options on each child. The app was slow before in this regard, but it's much slower in the last week. Browser/web/Windows 10 interface works fine. Maybe prefetch the screen time data immediately when the app is run? Update 1: The app no longer works at all. The error message is: It's not you it's us. Update 2: The app is still slow, but at least it's working again. 3 stars.

What's new

- Review location settings.