Terms.

What the app is

Key Please blocks apps and websites on one phone. A second person, on a second phone, decides when they open. You choose what to block and who holds the key. When you want something opened, you ask, and they answer.

A block can also carry a daily time limit, set by the person holding the key. Inside it the apps open. When the time runs out the block goes back up, and the way past it is the ordinary ask.

An adult can do this for their own phone. An adult can also set it up on a child’s phone in their own family and hold the key themselves.

Using the app means agreeing to this page. If you do not agree with it, do not install it, and delete it if you already have.

What it does not promise

On an iPhone, deleting the app always removes the block

That is how Apple’s blocking works and we cannot change it. The only promise this app makes is that you cannot get round it quietly: the person holding your key is told, the ways out are slow, and every one is visible.

A person holding a key is a person, not a service

We do not promise that anybody answers, or answers quickly. If nobody answers, a request opens on its own after eight hours, so you are never left waiting for ever.

We do not promise an outcome

Not that you will spend less, gamble less, or use your phone differently. The app puts a person between you and a decision. What you do with that is yours.

What happens without the internet

The blocking runs on your own phone and works with no signal at all. Reaching the other person needs a connection. If our server cannot be reached, the app carries on rather than locking you out of anything extra.

What it may not be used for

This app is for blocking your own phone, or a child’s phone in your own family where you are responsible for them.

Not on another adult’s phone unless they chose it

Do not put this app on another adult’s phone unless they chose it, know it is there, and can take it off.

Controlling another adult’s access to their own phone can be a criminal offence in the United Kingdom. Controlling or coercive behaviour between people who are personally connected is an offence under the Serious Crime Act 2015, and the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 counts economic abuse as including behaviour that substantially affects somebody’s ability to obtain goods or services.

Never block a phone’s ability to get help

This app is built around spending and content. The picker can select anything, so this one is on the person choosing: nothing somebody needs in order to call for help, reach a service or contact anybody belongs in a block.

What the keyholder’s side will never do

It shows the requests you send them, and two facts about your phone. No location. No list of the apps on your phone. No usage totals, no screen time figures. No proof that a condition was really done. No photographs.

The two facts: when your phone last checked in with us, and whether the app was deleted and put back. After a day and a half of silence they are told that too. Neither carries a reason, because we do not know it.

That is a line rather than a plan. A request to cross it is refused rather than designed around.

The exit belongs to the person whose phone it is

• Only the blocked phone can end a pairing. The person holding the key cannot end it, and cannot stop it being ended.
• Deleting the app lifts every block on that phone. That cannot be switched off, put behind a code, or made conditional on anything.
• The emergency unlock, the escape hatch and standing somebody down are never behind a payment.

If somebody set this up on your phone and you did not agree to it

Deleting the app removes every block on this phone. Nobody can prevent that, no code is needed for it, and it works whether or not anybody agrees.

The emergency unlock inside the app opens everything for sixteen minutes without asking anybody. It can be used once a month, and the person holding the key is told it was used. That is said here so that nobody is surprised by it.

The app cannot see your messages, your photos, your location or your browsing, and neither can the person holding the key. That is true whatever they have told you.

If it would help to talk to somebody who is not us, these two are independent of this app and nothing you do with them reaches us.

Which screen you open is never reported to the person holding your key. They are shown when your phone last checked in with us, and opening the app counts as checking in. Nothing else about how you use your phone is sent anywhere.

Setting it up on a child’s phone

The adult who sets it up is the person we deal with. The phone being blocked has a screen listing exactly what the person holding the key can and cannot see, reached from the screen that appears when something is blocked, so it can be read without asking anybody and without unblocking anything.

• Nothing is counted on a child’s phone, and no setting anywhere can start it.
• No price is ever shown on a child’s phone. Whoever set the app up pays, on their own phone.
• The four digit code in the app is a gate on a screen. It is not proof that anybody consented to anything, and we do not treat it as consent.
• This mode is offered in the United Kingdom and the European Union only, for the reason given in the privacy policy.

Paying for it

The person holding a key never pays

Their side of the app is free, in every case, for ever. There is no purchase of any kind on it. The half of the product that does the work is the half nobody is charged for.

The subscription

The app is bought through Apple, in the App Store, on the phone of whoever set it up. It renews by itself, for the period you chose, until you cancel.

What it costs, which periods are offered, and any free trial, are shown in the App Store and in the app before you buy. They are not printed here, because a figure on this page would be wrong in some country the moment it was typed.

Cancelling, and refunds

Cancelling goes through Apple, not through us. On your iPhone: open Settings, tap your name, then Subscriptions.

Cancelling stops the next renewal and you keep what you paid for until the period ends. Refunds are handled by Apple under their own terms, and we cannot issue one.

If a payment fails

A failed payment never removes protection. Your first block stays live and the rest pause. Nobody’s key is taken away, and nothing is deleted.

What you write stays yours

The reason you type, the note somebody writes back, the names you chose: they are yours. We use them to get them to the person you sent them to and for nothing else. We do not read them for any other purpose, we do not sell them, and we do not train anything on them. What happens to them afterwards is in the privacy policy.

Stopping

Stop using it

Delete the app. Every block on that phone comes off. Nothing has to be asked of anybody.

Remove what the server holds

A separate control, in the app, in the privacy section of Settings. Deleting the app does not do it.

Us ending it

We may end access where somebody is attacking the service itself. We cannot settle a disagreement between two people about a phone, and will not pretend otherwise. If somebody set this app up on your phone and you did not agree to it, the section above is the honest answer: deleting the app removes it now, and nobody can prevent that.

Where we stand if something goes wrong

The app is a tool, not a guarantee. We are not responsible for what the person holding your key decides, how long they take, or what you do while a block is off. We are not responsible for what Apple’s own blocking does or does not do on your phone.

We do not limit our responsibility for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow to be limited. Nothing on this page removes the rights you have as a consumer.

Changes, and which law applies

If these terms change, the date at the top changes with them, and what changed is noted here rather than left for you to spot.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. If you live elsewhere in the United Kingdom, or in the European Union, you keep the consumer protections of the country you live in and nothing here takes them away.