Parent PIN — Setup, Recovery, and Changing the Limit
This piece makes one thing clear: what the parent’s 4-digit PIN is for, and what the child sees on their end.
1. Setting your parent PIN
The first time you open the app, you’ll be guided through setting a 4-digit PIN.
A few principles
- Your PIN should be known only to you — don’t let your child watch you type it in
- Don’t use numbers your child could guess — birthdays, apartment numbers, and the last digits of your phone number are all easy to try
- What if you forget your PIN? — currently, we have no recovery process. You’ll need to uninstall and reinstall the app. We deliberately chose not to build “recover by email” or “recover by SMS” — those channels could also be accessible to your child.
PIN security
We don’t store your PIN in plaintext — locally or on any server. The PIN is saved as a salted hash. Even if someone gains access to your device, they cannot read the PIN directly from the app’s data.
2. On the child’s end: “Time’s Up” is a gentle screen, with no PIN box
When your child has used up today’s allowed time, a gentle full-screen image appears — a friendly turtle, with text like “Today’s time is up.”
One thing here is very important:
The screen the child sees has no PIN input field and no “unlock” button.
This is deliberate. Putting a PIN box in front of the child would amount to reminding them every day that “if you go ask Mom for the password, you can keep going.” That turns into a loop of pleading and bargaining, and we don’t want children learning to “beg for more time.”
So the child’s screen is purely informational and read-only: it simply tells them they’ve reached the end for today.
3. Want to make an exception (a little more today)? Open the app and change the limit
So what if today you genuinely want to give your child a bit more time (a holiday, a sick day at home)?
The only way is for the parent to do it directly:
- Open the main Tortoise Time app
- Go to Settings
- Enter your 4-digit PIN
- Adjust today’s allowed time
This friction is by design. We don’t put a shortcut on the child’s “Time’s Up” screen. Instead, the parent opens the app, passes the PIN, and changes the limit by hand.
The difference is subtle but crucial:
- ❌ Child pleads at the lock screen → you enter the PIN → the rule gets “bypassed”
- ✅ You open the app → pass the PIN → change the limit → the rule gets redefined
The first teaches the child that “crying works.” The second teaches that “rules are held by the parent, but can be adjusted thoughtfully.”
4. Which actions require the PIN
The PIN isn’t only for making exceptions. All of these require a PIN first:
- Changing the daily allowed time — adjusting the limit in Settings
- Changing the PIN itself
- Turning off monitoring / pausing protection — we treat any action that “loosens control” as something requiring careful confirmation
- Revoking device admin permission / uninstalling the app — these are Android system dialogs; the app requires PIN verification before allowing them to proceed
Any action that relaxes or removes protection must pass through the PIN — so even if your child finds the Settings screen, they can’t change anything.
5. Wrong PIN attempts
We use a progressive wait mechanism — the more wrong attempts, the longer the wait before the next try. This is designed to stop children from guessing the PIN repeatedly. If you find your PIN has entered a waiting state, it’s likely your child tried it while you weren’t around.
A wait lockout doesn’t affect the app’s protection — the child still can’t get past the “Time’s Up” screen. You just need to wait out the period before you can enter the PIN again.
Wondering why the “Time’s Up” screen lags on some phones? FAQ. Want to understand why we don’t “just lock the screen when time’s up”? Gentle Guidance.