Getting set up

Install Porchlight on your child’s own Mac, the one they actually use, signed into your child’s own macOS login and their own Apple Account in Messages. That login is where their Messages history lives, and it’s the whole reason the brief can be written on your Mac instead of in a cloud. An always-on desktop (a Mac mini or iMac) is ideal; a laptop works too, it just needs to be awake to do its work.

Three common homes for it: the family iMac in the kitchen, signed into your child’s Apple Account so their Messages sync there; your teenager’s own MacBook, installed with them; or a spare Mac in a closet, signed into their account and left on. And it doesn’t matter where your child is during the day: their messages reach their own devices as always, and the Mac at home reads its copy each evening. “In your home” is where the reading happens, not where your child has to be.

Install Porchlight on their MacBook, in their own macOS login. That’s where their Messages live, so it’s the only place the brief can be written without anything leaving your home. It only reads while the laptop is on and awake, so a MacBook that’s closed in a backpack all day catches up in the evening when it’s open again; nothing is lost, just delayed. If you have an always-on desktop signed into the same Apple Account, that’s the better home for it.

Do it with them, not to them. Porchlight is built for openness, and with an older teen the conversation is the whole thing. Before you install, send them the page we wrote for them: what your parent sees  →. It says plainly what the brief contains (the shape of the day, not a transcript), what it never does (no location, no reading over their shoulder, no messages sent anywhere), and that they can ask to read the brief too. Setup then walks you both through the family agreement.

On the fear of “they’ll think I’m spying”: what a parent receives is a few sentences on how the day felt and the one thing worth a conversation, never their words. Most families start with the least (Messages only) and add sources later, if ever. Saying that out loud, and showing them the page, is what turns this from surveillance into something closer to noticing they seemed quiet at dinner.

If it’s their machine and you’d rather it not sit in their menu bar, quiet mode keeps it out of sight; their page still tells them it may run that way. Out of sight, not out of the conversation.

A Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) running macOS 26 or later, signed into the macOS user account your child messages from. Plan on about 20 GB of free disk storage for the private Porchlight model; 16 GB of RAM memory is recommended for comfortable digest runs. The installer confirms the chip and macOS version before anything is installed.

Everywhere except Germany and Austria for now. Their laws around family monitoring deserve careful review before we offer Porchlight there. The product is currently English-only; more languages are on the roadmap.

The first run downloads Porchlight’s on-device intelligence, about 7 GB, and that dominates the wait: minutes on fast internet, longer on slow. The screen shows live progress, and it’s safe to close the window; the download and the first brief keep going in the background and the brief lands in your inbox when it’s ready, typically within 15 to 30 minutes. A quit or restart part-way costs nothing: the download resumes where it left off.

That’s macOS, not a bug, and it affects every password manager including Apple’s own. When you connect a Google, Instagram or Spotify account, the sign-in happens in a window Porchlight hosts, and macOS only allows autofill into an app’s own website, never someone else’s. It is an anti-phishing rule we can’t and shouldn’t lift.

The way through: copy the password out of your password manager and press ⌘V in the sign-in window. If the account uses a passkey, choose “Try another way” on Google’s screen and use the password path instead.

Porchlight must be installed in the Applications folder and granted Full Disk Access under the macOS user account your child actually messages from. The setup wizard checks both live and won’t let you proceed until they’re green.

Setup asks for exactly two macOS permissions, and Apple requires that you flip both yourself. Full Disk Access lets Porchlight read your child’s activity on this Mac. Accessibility lets it read Screen Time. The setup screen has an “Open Settings” button for each that jumps to the right pane.

To fix either one later: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access (or Accessibility), find Porchlight, and turn its switch on. Don’t see Porchlight in the list? Click the + button at the bottom, choose Porchlight from Applications, and switch it on. If the app was ever moved out of the Applications folder, macOS quietly forgets these grants: put it back in Applications, then re-grant.

Each child gets Porchlight on their own Mac login, because Messages history is private to each login. That’s a feature: it keeps one child’s conversations separate from the other’s. From the menu bar choose “Add a child…” and Porchlight walks you through it: create a Standard macOS account for the child (System Settings → Users & Groups), sign that login into their own Apple Account in Messages, open Porchlight there, and activate with the same email you used the first time. It joins your household automatically; one bill, one more brief each evening.

macOS updates sometimes revoke the Full Disk Access permission Porchlight needs. open Porchlight, then in the menu at the top of the screen choose Help → “Run Permission Check” and it will walk you through re-granting it. This is the single most common issue, and the fix takes under a minute.