Terms of use.

Who this agreement is with

These terms are between you and Kairos OS Ltd, the UK company behind Kairoo (company number 17248927, registered address 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ). By using kairoo.family or installing the Kairoo apps, you accept them. If you don’t agree with them, please don’t use the site or the apps.

Kairoo is built with Nesta, the UK’s innovation agency for social good. These terms are with Kairos OS Ltd only. Nesta is not a party to them, does not operate the site or the apps, and is not responsible for them or for your data.

How we handle your data is set out in our privacy notice, which sits alongside these terms.

What early access means

• We take a few families at a time from the waiting list. Joining the list doesn’t guarantee you a place or a date.
• Kairoo is still being built. Features may change, break or be withdrawn while we learn what works. Today it’s phones. Tablets, consoles and the TV are coming, and we can’t promise when.
• We may pause or end the early-access programme, for everyone or for your family, and we’ll tell you by email if we do.
• Early access is free, and no card is asked for. We haven’t set a launch price. If that changes, you’ll hear it from us first, in plain numbers, before anything is charged. Nothing in these terms lets us charge you without asking you first.

Who can join

• You must be an adult (18 or over) with parental responsibility for the child who will use the child app.
• Kairoo is built in the UK and offered to families wherever we can support them. During early access we take groups on a few at a time and tell you when it is your turn.
• You install and set up the child app on your child’s phone yourself, with you present.
• Your child agreeing to the family agreement is part of how Kairoo works. If they won’t sign it, don’t install it. A Kairoo imposed on a child is just another wall, and walls don’t work.
• Only you may join the waiting list or set up the apps. A child shouldn’t do either without you.

What Kairoo is, and what it isn’t

Kairoo is a tool that holds a screen-time agreement your family writes together. It gives the reminders, says the no, and explains why. That is what it does.

It is not:

• a safety, monitoring or filtering product. It doesn’t read messages, filter content, track location or show you what your child looks at;
• medical, psychological or educational advice, or a substitute for any of those;
• a substitute for you. It holds the agreement. It doesn’t supervise your child, and you stay responsible for them.

Your side of it

• If you save your family to an email address, make it one you read, and tell us if it changes. Saving is where you agree to these terms.
• Keep your phone and your child’s phone reasonably secure. The pairing code links the two, so don’t share it beyond your family.
• Use Kairoo for your own family only. Don’t install it on anyone else’s phone, and don’t use it on an adult.
• Set it up with your child, not on them. The apps show both of you the same record. That is the point.

How we’ll be in touch

• If you save your family to an email address (in the parent’s app, or on this site), we use it to send you what it takes to run Kairoo: the sign-in code you asked for; a reminder if setting up your child’s phone stalls, with how to finish and how to reach a person; the week’s story, once that exists; and news of changes to Kairoo itself — a new feature, a change to these terms, the end of early access. These are part of the service you signed up for. Every one of them that isn’t a code carries a link to stop that kind of email.
• Nothing else. We don’t email you about anyone else’s products, and we don’t sell, rent or swap the address. If we ever want to send you something that isn’t about running Kairoo, we’ll ask you first, separately, and you can say no.
• The version you agreed to is kept on your family record, and we send only the kinds of email that version allows. A family that saved before these terms changed hears from us only as those older terms said.
• Emails go out through our email service, Customer.io, in the EU; the privacy notice says what it holds.

What we don’t promise

• Outcomes. We can’t promise calmer evenings, a child who stops on their own, or any particular result. Every family is different.
• Uptime. Kairoo may be unavailable, slow or wrong, especially during early access. Don’t rely on it for anything where a failure would matter.
• That it can’t be got round. A determined child may find a way past it. In our pilot, some tried, and we fixed holes because of it. Kairoo is a commitment your family makes, not a lock we guarantee.
• The rest of the phone. We don’t control the phone’s operating system, its app store, or other apps, and changes to any of them can affect how Kairoo works.

Acceptable use

Please don’t:

• use Kairoo to watch or control anyone who isn’t your child, or install it on a phone you don’t have the right to set up;
• try to break into, overload, copy, scrape, reverse-engineer or interfere with the site, the apps or our systems, beyond what the law allows;
• put someone else’s email address on the waiting list;
• use Kairoo for anything unlawful.

If your child finds a way round the apps, that is a bug for us to fix, not a breach by you. We’d like to hear about it.

Whose is what

• The Kairoo name, the site, the apps, the illustrations, the film and the words are ours (Kairos OS Ltd’s) or our licensors’. You may use them to use Kairoo, and for nothing else without asking us.
• We give you a personal licence to install and use the apps, for your own family, on phones you have the right to set up. It can’t be sold, lent or passed on; you may not copy, change, rent, sub-license or take apart the apps, or extract their source, beyond what the law lets you do regardless of these terms. We may change, suspend or withdraw any feature, and may need you to update the apps to keep using Kairoo. The licence ends when these terms do.
• We may use information about how Kairoo is used in a form that cannot identify you or your child — counts, averages, patterns — to improve it, to report on the early-access programme to Nesta, and to describe how families use it. Never in a way that names or identifies a family.
• The agreement your family writes is yours, and so are the reasons and choices you and your child put into the apps. We hold that content only to run Kairoo for you, as the privacy notice explains, and we delete it when you ask.
• If you send us feedback or ideas, we can use them to improve Kairoo without owing you anything for them. We won’t quote you publicly without asking you first.

Our responsibility to you

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else the law says cannot be limited. Nothing in them takes away your rights as a consumer under UK law.

Beyond that, because Kairoo is free and in early access, we are not responsible for losses that were not a foreseeable result of us breaking these terms or failing to use reasonable care and skill, or for losses caused by something outside our control, by your own breach of these terms, or by your child finding a way round the apps. Kairoo is for family use at home, and we are not responsible for business losses.

Ending it

• You can stop at any time. Uninstall the apps from both phones, and email hello@kairoo.family if you want your family record deleted: it is gone within 48 hours. To leave the waiting list, use the unsubscribe link in any email from us.
• We can suspend or end your access straight away if we reasonably believe the apps are being used against these terms — on a phone you have no right to set up, on an adult, or to interfere with our systems — or where we must to protect a child, other families or Kairoo. We’ll tell you why, unless the law stops us.
• We can end your access if you break these terms, if we pause or end the early-access programme, or if the project ends. We’ll tell you by email, and we’ll delete your family record within 30 days of ending your access unless you ask us to keep it for an export.
• Whichever way it ends, the parts of these terms that are meant to last (whose is what, our responsibility to you, and the law that applies) keep applying.

Paying for Kairoo

There is nothing to pay during early access, and no card is asked for. These terms say nothing about payments, subscriptions or refunds because none exist yet. When we set a price, we’ll publish terms for paid plans, and you’ll be able to read them before you decide.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as Kairoo grows, but only for a good reason: a new feature, a change in the law, or a mistake we need to fix. If a change affects your rights or what Kairoo does, we’ll email everyone who saved a family to an email, and everyone on the waiting list, before it takes effect and say what changed. If you keep using Kairoo after that, you accept the new terms. If you don’t agree, you can stop and ask us to delete your data. Small wording fixes just appear here with a new date.

Other things

• These terms and the privacy notice are the whole agreement between us about Kairoo. If part of them turns out not to be enforceable, the rest still applies.
• If we don’t act on a breach straight away, we haven’t given up the right to act on it later.
• We may pass these terms to a company that takes over Kairoo, and we’ll tell you if we do; you may not pass them to anyone else.
• The apps come from Apple’s App Store and Google Play, whose own terms also apply to the download. Neither Apple nor Google is a party to these terms or responsible for the apps; Apple may enforce these terms as a third party where the App Store rules require it.

The law that applies

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales can settle any dispute about them. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can also bring a claim in your local courts, and you keep any protection that the law of the part of the UK you live in gives you.

Contact

Kairos OS Ltd, 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ. Email hello@kairoo.family.

Last updated: 13 September 2026.

Back to Kairoo · Questions about any of this: hello@kairoo.family