Slate Time starts when you hand the phone over and ends when the day’s limit runs out. In between, the phone is a slate: the library, the reader, the games your child has earned, and nothing else.
Before you hand it over
Open Slate, choose the reader, and tap Start Slate Time. Today’s limit is the Slate time slider in your parent space, fifteen minutes to two hours in quarter-hour steps, and twenty minutes is a good first number. On Android the phone pins itself to Slate. On iPhone and iPad, Slate Time only starts with Guided Access on, and Slate walks you through switching it on the first time.
Calls still ring through. A call comes up over the slate the way it always does, and when it ends, the slate comes back.
What your child sees
A shelf of books at their reading age. Nothing to type, nothing to search. Open a book, turn the pages, finish it. A book that was actually read, not flipped through, earns a few minutes in the Gamebox, up to the ceiling you set, and the games live on the same slate under the same lock. Time in the games counts toward the day’s limit, the same as reading.
When it stops
Once the limit is used up, the next time your child comes back to the shelf the slate says the day is done: a sleepy owl, “All done,” and “See you tomorrow.” There is no snooze and no five more minutes. The phone stays in Slate until you let it out, and the day starts again at four in the morning, so a late bedtime book never borrows from tomorrow.
Leaving early
Tap the small door in the top corner of the library. Slate asks once, “Leave Slate Time?” On Android your phone’s own lock takes over: your fingerprint, your face, or your PIN, pattern or passcode. On iPhone and iPad, press the side button three times and enter your Guided Access passcode, or use Face ID if you turned that on for Guided Access. The minutes already used still count: start Slate Time again later and the day carries on from where it stopped. Slate holds no passcode of its own, so there is nothing for your child to learn and nothing for us to reset.
