Parental controls and custom servers on Xbox and PlayStation

If your child asked to install Warpling so they can play on a server their friends talk about, this page is for you. The short version: Warpling does not change any of the console's family settings. If multiplayer is off on your child's account, servers still refuse the console, with or without the app.

What Warpling does

Warpling runs on a phone. It shows a LAN world on your home Wi-Fi; the console joins it, and the game is moved on to the server picked on the phone. That is all. It does not sign in to anything, it has no account, no chat and no friends list, and it does not touch the console's settings.

Why family settings still apply

A server decides who gets in using the console's own account. When the game arrives at a server, the account's settings travel with it: whether it may play online at all, and whether it may join multiplayer games. An account where a parent has switched multiplayer off is refused at the server. On the screen, your child sees the game move them on and then drop them back at the main menu.

Warpling's Not showing up? screen names this as one of the likely reasons when it happens, and says that on a child account it is a parent's setting.

Where the settings live

• Xbox: the Xbox Family Settings app or the Microsoft Family Safety website. Look for the settings that allow joining multiplayer games and communicating with other players.
• PlayStation: Family Management in the PlayStation settings, or on the PlayStation website. Its parental controls cover online play and communicating with other players.
• Minecraft itself uses the Microsoft account your child signs in with, so the Microsoft family settings for that account apply on every console.

Choosing servers

Public servers are run by their owners, with their own chat, rules and moderation. If you allow multiplayer, it is worth looking at a server's website and rules together before your child joins. Our server list shows what each server is about, and we list only servers that answered when we checked; that is not a judgment about whether a server suits young players.

What Warpling knows about you

Very little. There is no account and no analytics of ours, and the status checks it sends to servers carry nothing about you. The only thing it ever sends us is a message someone chooses to write in Send feedback. Details in the privacy policy.