Powerful enough to matter,
transparent enough to trust.

Parental controls, built by kids, for parents.

Download Optic Free for families · Windows 10 & 11 See how it works

The dashboard

Your children, on one screen

What Optic does

Everything a parent actually needs

Six tools, one app, fine-grained personalization.

Activity Monitor

A readable timeline of apps, websites, files, and commands opened summarized with timestamps.

Smart Alerts

Alerts on your device for things that genuinely matter: screen time requests, attempts to bypass blocking, and requests for unblocking a website or app.

Screen Time Tools

Detailed tools to control screen time with grace periods, extra time, and scheduled blocks of screen time.

App & Web Controls

Absolute control over when apps or websites get blocked or unblocked, and when they should automatically be blocked again.

Parent Dashboard

All your child’s activity, requests, and rules you implemented in one screen. Along with a rule assistant you can talk to in plain English.

Child interface

Your child knows exactly what is going on. They can see the rules being implemented and also all the enlightening data you see on their own dashboard.

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Screen time

Rules that survive with a real family

Set a daily budget for each device and fine-tune screen time rules to your family’s needs rather than arguing over each one.

  • Daily budgets with a self-serve grace allowance
  • Per-time-of-day modes: Block, Enforce, Remind
  • "Ask for 20 more minutes" requests with a reason attached

Alerts

Told when it matters, quiet the rest of the time

Optic tells your child first, through on-screen popups — and tells you when something needs a parent: a rule hit, time running out, or a request waiting.

  • Screen time running low, screen time exhausted
  • Blocked apps and sites, named honestly in a popup
  • Extra-time requests landing in your dashboard

Why us

Built by kids. That's the whole point.

Every monitoring app we tried was written by adults guessing at what teenagers do all day. We're the ones being monitored — so we know which controls actually work, which ones get bypassed in an afternoon, and which ones quietly wreck the trust in a house.

Meet the team

  • Nothing hiddenYour child sees the same activity list you do.
  • No stealth modeOptic never runs invisibly. If it's watching, it says so.
  • No message readingWe show patterns and flags, never a transcript of private chats.
  • Ages with themPresets loosen as your child gets older, on a schedule you set.

From parents

In their own words

Screen time, rules and the arguments in between — said by the parents living it.

  • “I'm trying to understand [how] he used nine hours. To me that doesn't make any sense. I know that he didn't, but I'd like to know how much active time he actually [spent] on the computer.”

    A parent

  • “I'll probably ask him tonight, like, "What did you use nine hours of computer for?" And he'll be like, "That's stupid. I don't even have nine hours to spend on the computer."”

    A parent

  • “My opinion is the computer should only be used for schoolwork … and extracurriculars.”

    A parent

  • “As a child matures, restrictions should be less and less as they learn what acceptable boundaries are, and learn to control their impulses.”

    A parent

  • “If it was like a thousand, I would find another option, because there are other options. There are certainly other options. If it was 200, I'd pay it.”

    A parent

  • “We let him play [Roblox] a bunch this weekend, and so I enabled it so he could play, and then it just slipped my mind. I forgot to [re]block it. So now I have to remember to block it again.”

    A parent

  • “With middle schoolers…the response is a lot more confrontational, because they don't understand why the rules exist.”

    A parent

  • “He would push back, [and] he’d still look for workarounds and loopholes to try to bypass as much as he can.”

    A parent

  • “That's kind of a constant battle, which is like, "Oh, now he's figured out another way to install Roblox."”

    A parent

  • “I have a full-time job. My job should not be a full-time monitor of his use of technology.”

    A parent

Set it up before dinner.

Free for up to three devices. No card, no trial countdown, no ads. Install it, pair your child's PC, and you're done in about four minutes.

Download Optic Free for families · Windows 10 & 11