Help with Slate.

Slate signs you in with your phone number and a one-time code we text you — there is no password, and no Google or email sign-in. If the SMS hasn’t landed, give it a minute, check the number you typed, and use the resend. On some phones the code fills itself in; if yours doesn’t, typing it in by hand works exactly the same.

Still nothing? Email us the number and we’ll look at our side.

No. Your subscription belongs to your phone number, not to a handset. Install Slate on the new phone, sign in with the same number, and everything you’ve paid for is already there — Android or iPhone, either way. There is nothing to transfer and nothing to restore by hand.

Kid spaces are the one exception, and deliberately so: they live only on the phone and never reach our servers, so you set them up again on the new one. That is the same reason we hold nothing about your child.

You get a 7-day free trial first — all of Slate, no card. After that it is currently ₹149 a month or ₹999 a year — the exact price is always on the screen you subscribe from. One price covers every kid in the house.

Wherever you started it. A store subscription is cancelled in the store’s own subscription settings — we don’t have a way to do that for you from inside Slate.

Android: Play Store → your profile icon → Payments & subscriptions → Subscriptions → Slate → Cancel.

iPhone or iPad: Settings → your name → Subscriptions → Slate → Cancel Subscription.

If you subscribed on this website: that one is ours to stop — sign in and cancel here, or email us and we’ll do it.

Cancelling stops the next renewal. You keep Slate until the period you’ve already paid for runs out.

In the app: Settings → Delete account. It removes your account and everything held against your number on our servers. It cannot be undone.

If your number bought a plan through a store or used a free trial, one small record stays behind: a scrambled form of the number with the store reference and the trial it was tied to, so a plan cannot be claimed by another number and a trial cannot be taken twice. It holds no digits and nothing about your child — the privacy policy sets out exactly what it holds and how long we keep it.

Deleting the account does not cancel a Play Store or App Store subscription — those live with the store, so cancel there first (above). You can also email us and we’ll delete it for you.

Tap the small door in the top corner of the library — or hold that corner for five seconds if the door isn’t in reach. Slate asks once, “Leave Slate Time?”, and then your phone’s own lock takes over: your fingerprint, your face, or your PIN, pattern or passcode. Unlock, and the phone is a phone again.

There is no separate Slate code any more, so there is nothing to forget and nothing for us to reset. The key is the one you already carry, and your child doesn’t know it.

On iPhone and iPad the door shows you the three presses instead of a Leave button: press the side button (the top button on an iPad) three times and enter your Guided Access passcode, or Face ID if you turned that on for Guided Access. That one step releases the phone and ends Slate Time.

Still see a “Parent code” pad? You’re on an older Slate. Updating from the Play Store or the App Store removes the code for good. Until then, if the code is what’s in your way: iPhone or iPad— sign out of Slate, or delete the app and reinstall it, then sign in again. Android— if the phone is pinned to Slate mid-session, hold the Back and Recents buttons together (on gesture navigation, swipe up and hold) and Android unpins, asking for the phone’s own screen lock rather than the Slate code; then clear Slate’s storage (Settings → Apps → Slate → Storage & cache → Clear storage) or reinstall the app, and sign in again.

Starting fresh clears the kid spaces on that phone — they live only there, never with us — so you will set them up again. Your subscription is untouched: it belongs to your number, and signing back in brings it with it.

One thing worth checking: if your child’s own fingerprint or face is enrolled on this phone, that enrolment is a key too — Slate can’t tell whose finger it is. Either don’t enrol your child on the phone you hand over, or use a lock they don’t know.

Android: during Slate Time the phone pins itself to Slate, and ending the session takes your phone’s own lock. If the phone is unpinned from outside Slate, Slate never pins itself back over your hand. When your phone asked for its PIN before unpinning, that was you ending Slate Time: it ends there and then, and the next time you open Slate you are back on your own screen. When it unpinned without asking — the bare gesture, which a child’s hand can produce just as easily as yours — Slate stops the reading and shows the pin-again screen instead, because nothing about that gesture says a grown-up did it. Getting back to your own screen from there still takes the grown-up door and your phone’s lock.

iPhone or iPad: Apple doesn’t let one app lock the phone by itself, so Slate can’t stop a swipe out of the app. The lock is Guided Access, and it is yours to turn on: do it once in Settings → Accessibility → Guided Access, then triple-click the side button when you hand the phone over. Tap Start Slate Time and Slate shows you those three presses and waits — the moment the lock lands, Slate Time begins.

Once the phone is held in Slate that way, the Guided Access passcode is the only way out, and it ends both things at once: triple-click, confirm it, and the phone is released and Slate Time is over. (If you turned on Face ID or Touch ID under Guided Access → Passcode Settings, that confirms it too — you won’t have to type the passcode.) So the door in the library shows you those three presses instead of a Leave button — a button there would only ask for your face or PIN and hand you back a phone still locked into Slate.

There is no Slate Time without the lock. Start Slate Time waits for the three presses, and the first time it shows you the one-time setup: Settings → Accessibility → Guided Access, turn it on and set a passcode, then come back. If you have other Accessibility Shortcuts on, three presses show a menu first; pick Guided Access.

Android only. Slate holds the phone with Android’s own app pinning, and that switch has to be on before any app is allowed to use it. Most phones ship with it off. When it is off, Start Slate Time can never raise the “Got it” sheet, so nothing appears and Slate shows you the one-time steps with a Try again button.

Turn it on in the phone’s own Settings, then come back to Slate and tap Try again. Every manufacturer words it differently, so the surest route is the search box at the top of Settings: type pinning. Otherwise look under Settings → Security (or Security & privacy, then the extra or advanced security section) for App pinning, Screen pinning or Pin windows.

Pinning is required: Slate Time does not start without it. The lock is the point of Slate, so there is no version of the session where the phone is not held in Slate.

iPhone or iPad: this one doesn’t apply. Apple has no app pinning at all — Guided Access is the equivalent, and it has its own answer above.

Nothing. Nothing about your child is ever sent to us — no profile, no progress file, no behavioural record. Our servers have nowhere to put it. The privacy policy says so in full.

Email us straight away with the number you signed in with and roughly when you paid. If a payment went through and the subscription didn’t start, we will find it and put it right.