Setting up your family Orbit

Orbits: your family's private space

An Orbit is one household: a parent (or two) and their children, in a single private space. Think of it as your immediate family under one roof. It holds the parents, their children, any other family members you bring in, and the connections between them. Usernames only need to be unique inside an Orbit, so your child can pick a name they like without fighting the entire internet for it.

An Orbit can hold three kinds of people:

• Parents: adults who run the Orbit. They can add children, invite adults, set safety rules, and approve who their children chat with.
• Children: accounts created by a parent. Children don't have email addresses; they sign in with a one-time code.
• Family members: other trusted adults like grandparents, aunts, uncles, or older siblings. Each has their own Orbit, and joining yours links the two together so the family can chat in one shared space. They take part as trusted grown-ups, but get none of a parent's controls.

Parents and family members join by invitation, so the whole family shares the same private space. Reaching another family is a separate thing — that's an external contact, and it works differently. The two are easy to mix up, so we lay them out side by side under family members below.

Parent sign-up

Parents sign up with email, password, username, and an optional display name. Before the account is created, we send a six-digit code to your email address to check you own it. Enter the code, and the account is live.

• Email-checked. No code, no account. Every email belongs to one person.
• Passwords stored safely. We never store your password as plain text. Even our own staff can't read it.
• Stay signed in safely. Your phone holds a short-lived "you're signed in" pass that quietly renews itself, so you don't have to re-enter your password every day.
• One phone or several. Each phone or tablet you sign in on gets its own set of locks and keys.

Orbit onboarding: create or join

After sign-up and email verification, the very next screen asks the parent one question: are you starting a new family Orbit, or joining one?

Create

Pick a name for your Orbit (it doesn't have to be unique, since we use a random ID under the hood). Submit, and you're in. You can now add children and invite adults from the dashboard.

Join

An adult already in the Orbit generates a one-time invite code and shares it. Paste the code on the Join tab, submit, and you're placed in the same Orbit. The code is single-use and expires in 30 minutes.

Invite links and QR codes

Invite codes work three ways:

• Type it in. Two easy words, simple to read out over the phone.
• Tap a link. The same code is also a tap-to-join link. Tap it on a phone that has Orbit installed and the Join screen opens with the code already filled in.
• Scan a QR code. The dashboard shows a QR. Point any camera app at it and the phone opens Orbit on the join screen.

Works the same on iPhone and Android.

Child accounts

Children don't sign up themselves. A parent creates the profile from the dashboard (username, display name, optional avatar) and Orbit generates a one-time login code the child can type in on their own device. The code is shown as plain text and as a QR code, whichever suits the child's age best.

• No email address needed for the child.
• The sign-in code expires after 24 hours, and stops working the moment it's used once.
• If the code expires before the child signs in, you can make a new one from the child's screen in your Orbit app.
• Once your child is signed in, their phone makes its own set of locks and keys for keeping messages private.

Family members: grandparents and beyond

Not every adult in a family is a parent. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, an older sibling, a partner without children: you can bring them into your Orbit as a family member. A family member has their own Orbit, and joining yours links the two together, so it's less like adding a person to a list and more like widening your family's circle to include theirs.

• Family members register with email + password, just like parents, and join via an invite code from anyone already in the Orbit. (New to Orbit? They create their own Orbit first, then accept the invite, see one person, more than one family below.)
• They join as a trusted grown-up, near a parent but without the parent controls. They can't add children, set safety rules, approve who children chat with, or see the parents' alerts. That stays with the parents.
• They show up in the family chat and can be added to conversations in your Orbit, within the reach you set for them.
• You choose their reach when you invite them: exactly which adults and which children a family member can message. A grandparent can be welcomed into the children's conversations, while another guest is kept to the grown-ups.
• They get the same end-to-end encryption as everyone else.

This means the child's grandparents can be in the family group chat without you having to give them a "parent" role they didn't ask for.

One person, more than one family

Families don't always fit in a single household, and Orbit doesn't ask them to. A grandparent is part of both sides of the family. A parent may have children in two homes. So a family member can belong to more than one Orbit at the same time.

• Each household is its own Orbit. Grandparents on each side keep their own Orbit, and are added as family members of the households they're close to, rather than everyone crowding into one space.
• Invited family members start their own Orbit too. When someone new is invited as a family member, they create their own Orbit first, then accept the invitation to join yours. They stay in control of their own space while being welcomed into yours.
• No limit on how many Orbits you can belong to. You can be a family member of as many households as your family needs. The only limit is how many family members a single Orbit can have, which depends on that Orbit's plan.
• Each membership is separate. Who you can message, and which children you can reach, is decided per Orbit by that household's parents. Being trusted in one home never carries over to another.

Your dashboard shows your own household at the top, with a separate section for the other Orbits you're a family member of, so it's always clear which family you're looking at. And a parent can start a group chat that spans households, so both sets of grandparents can share in the same conversation.

Parent-approved child logins

By default, once a child is logged in on a device, they stay logged in. But for extra control, parents can turn on require login approval per child. When it's on:

• Every new device that tries to sign the child in is quarantined.
• The parent sees a "Login requests" card on the dashboard with the device label and the time. (No location, no IP address; we don't collect them.)
• The parent taps Approve or Reject. The child's phone shows a "waiting for approval" screen in the meantime.
• Approved devices are trusted, and they skip the prompt next time.

The approval requirement is set per child, so it's shared across the child's adults: any of them can turn it on or off and the others see the same value. Rejecting a device immediately ends any session it had.

Your Orbit dashboard

The dashboard is the parent's home screen. It shows:

• Orbit header with the Orbit name and member count.
• Invite button that generates a fresh one-time code (shown as both text and a QR).
• Children cards: one per child, tap to open the child-detail screen.
• Login-request cards when approved-login is on and a child is waiting.
• Add menu: add a child, invite a parent or family member, or connect with another family.