Account & billing

The beta period is free for invited families. At launch: a 10-day free trial, then $14/month or $120/year for the whole household. No per-message metering, no tiers, just one cohesive service to provide daily insight and safety alerts for your child’s safety.

Activation matches the email you type against the email you used at checkout. The most common miss is having two: you subscribed with one address and typed another. Check your receipt from Stripe for the exact address, enter that one, and press Send code. The code arrives by email (or text, if you typed a mobile number), works once, and expires in 15 minutes; “Resend code” issues a fresh one.

Sign in at porchlights.ai/dashboard and choose “Cancel subscription”. Two clicks, no email required, no retention maze. Everything (digests and safety alerts) keeps working until the end of the period you’ve paid for, and you can undo the cancellation with one click any time before then. Your family’s data lives on your Mac, so canceling leaves nothing behind on our side; uninstalling the app removes the rest.

If your child has outgrown it, you can pass Porchlight forward: a one-time “goodbye gift” of three free months to up to five friends. It’s a way to leave the door open for families who’d still benefit. You’ll find it on your referral page when it’s available to you.

Porchlight keeps itself up to date. It checks every few hours, downloads new versions in the background, and installs them the next time the app quits. No downloads to chase, nothing to reinstall, and your settings, history, and permissions carry over. Want it sooner? Menu bar → Help → “Check for Updates…”.

Porchlight updates itself: it checks every few hours and installs on the next quit, no password needed. In Settings → Software Update you can choose Stable (only versions we’ve tested and promoted, recommended) or Beta (every new build as it ships, rough edges possible, wonderful if you’re helping us test). Help → “Check for Updates…” asks right now.

Don’t copy it over with Migration Assistant; install fresh. Porchlight notices a migrated identity and deliberately asks to be set up again, because each Mac earns its own delivery credentials. On the new Mac: install from the download link, sign the new Mac’s Messages into your child’s account, run through setup, and activate with your subscription email. The old Mac can be de-authorized from your dashboard, and uninstalling there removes everything it held.

Porchlight needs about 2 GB free to write the nightly brief, and macOS itself gets unhappy below that. Free up space (the biggest wins are usually old downloads and the Trash) and the next brief writes normally. Nothing was lost in the meantime.

That email means your child’s Mac hasn’t phoned home in over a day. Usually it’s harmless: your Mac is off, asleep in a bag, or nobody has logged in. But it can also mean monitoring was paused or switched off, so we always tell you rather than guess. To check: open your child’s Mac, log into their account, and look for the Porchlight lamp in the menu bar. If it’s missing, open Porchlight from Applications; if things still look off, the Help menu’s “Run Permission Check” confirms the permissions in one click.

Menu bar → “Pause monitoring” stops everything until you resume. To uninstall, open Porchlight’s Settings and choose “Uninstall Porchlight…” under Support. It removes the app, the local AI, and every trace of the data. Nothing exists anywhere else to clean up.

Quitting the app changes almost nothing: briefs and safety alerts are run by your Mac on a schedule, not by the app window, so they keep working. What stops while it’s quit: automatic updates, and the lamp in the menu bar. Pause monitoring (menu bar, behind your PIN) is the real off switch: no briefs and no safety alerts until you resume. Uninstall (bottom of Settings → Support) removes everything on that Mac: the app, the local AI, the agents, and every brief and setting. Your subscription is separate either way; manage it at porchlights.ai/dashboard.

Click “Forgot PIN?” on the PIN prompt. A six-digit reset code goes to the subscriber’s email (and phone, if one is linked); it works once and expires in 15 minutes. Enter it, set a new PIN, and carry on. Your child can press the button, but the code lands in your inbox, not theirs.

Two places. Every Daily Brief has a “Give a month, get a month →” line in its footer. Tap it and it opens your referral page with your link ready to copy. You can also find it any time by signing in at porchlights.ai/dashboard, under “Give a month.” Your link looks like porchlights.ai/r/… is the one to share.

Copy your personal link and send it however you like: a text, an email, a group chat. When your friend opens it and sets up Porchlight, their first month is applied free automatically at checkout. There’s nothing for them to enter, and nothing for you to do beyond sharing the link.

Your free month lands when a friend you referred moves from their free trial to a paid subscription. It’s credited to your account and comes off your next invoice. Waiting until they actually subscribe keeps it an honest recommendation rather than a sign-up bonus. You can give to as many friends as you like; there’s no cap on the months you can earn.

Their first month of Porchlight, free: the full product, every source, no reduced trial. It applies on its own when they subscribe, so they don’t need a code. After the free month, they continue at the normal price, or cancel any time with two clicks.