A safe nest for growing kids.
It watches the screen, not your child.
Nestcote reads the screen on the device itself and covers harmful content within moments. No cloud, no account, no data leaving the phone. Ever.
Nestcote opens nest by nest. We onboard a few families each week, so every one gets real attention.
Ofcom, May 2026
Seven in ten. In four weeks.
The UK regulator asked 11 to 17-year-olds what they had run into online in the previous four weeks. Not ever. Four weeks.
Where they saw it
- TikTok53%
- YouTube36%
- Instagram34%
- Snapchat31%
- Facebook31%
- Roblox25%
- WhatsApp25%
Percentage of children naming each service as somewhere they encountered harmful content. A filter that stops at the app door stops before all of these.
35%came to it through their own feed. Not searched for, not sought out. It arrived while they were scrolling, which is why a list of blocked sites never sees it.
Nestcote does not solve all of that. This first release covers explicit sexual content and gambling content, which are two of the kinds Ofcom counts. It covers them wherever they appear, including inside the apps above.
Ofcom, Children’s Online Experiences, published 21 May 2026. Children’s Online Safety Tracker Wave 2, fieldwork November to December 2025, children aged 11 to 17 who had used at least one of the listed services in the previous four weeks. Figures are self-reported, prompted with a list of content types. Read the report
Three things that are true today.
Nothing leaves the phone
Nestcote reads the screen on the device and decides there. Screen content is never stored and never uploaded. Not “encrypted in the cloud”. Not sent to us at all. Protection needs no connection to work.
It works where app blockers can’t
Filters and app lists stop at the door of an app. Nestcote watches the screen itself, in every app on the phone, and shields private browsing by default rather than pretending to see through it.
Your child always knows
A notification they can’t dismiss, a plain disclosure before anything starts, and a shield they can see. Nestcote is the opposite of a secret app, and that is the point.
It doesn’t matter which app it is.
Nestcote does not read apps. It reads the screen. Whatever is being shown, in whatever app, is what gets checked. A video app is no different from a browser, and a feed inside a chat app is no different from a website.
- Video
- Short video
- Photo feeds
- Chat
- Browsers
- Games
That includes YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Reddit, a browser, a game, or an app nobody has heard of yet. Nestcote does not need to know the app to see the screen.
The exception is a screen Android will not let any app see, such as DRM video or a banking app. Those come through black, so Nestcote covers them instead of guessing, and you can allow the ones you trust. This first release covers explicit sexual content and gambling content.
Nothing leaves the phone.
Not encrypted and sent. Not anonymised and sent. Not sent. Your child’s screen is read on their own device, judged there, and forgotten there.
A diagram: the phone on one side, with screen analysis happening inside it, and a solid line marking the edge of the device. Three arrows leaving the phone fade out and stop before reaching the line. Beyond it, nothing.
the edge of this device
nothing crosses
- No account to create, and no sign-in. There is nothing for us to hold.
- No analytics, no crash reporting, no tracking of any kind in the app.
- Turn the phone to aeroplane mode and protection carries on exactly as before.
The honest exception, stated before you ask: we are building an optional email alert that tells you protection stopped. You would switch it on yourself. It can carry an email address, a device name you choose, and a status word. It has no field for screen content, and in this beta it is not switched on at all.
How it works
Three steps, and your child can see every one of them.
Three phone screens in sequence. First, a page with an image loads normally, with the Nestcote notification visible at the top. Second, the image is being checked on the device itself. Third, a plain dark shield covers the image, and the rest of the page is untouched.
Content appears
Checked on the device
Covered within moments
You set it up together
Install it on your child’s phone and turn it on with them sitting next to you. The app explains what it will do in words a child can read, and their agreement is part of the setup, not something buried in a settings screen.
It watches the screen, on the phone
On-device AI checks what is on screen several times a second, in every app on the phone. No screenshots are kept, and nothing is sent anywhere.
Harmful content gets covered
A plain shield covers the screen within moments, and your child sees exactly what happened. No shaming, no report card, no secret log.
In this first release Nestcote covers explicit sexual content and gambling content. More categories arrive only when a detector we trust backs them.
The real thing, recorded
One take on an Android test device. Nothing here is a mock-up, including the part where the screen goes black.
Protection is running on the child’s phone. Nothing leaves the device.
What happens in the recording
- Protection is running on the child’s phone. Nothing leaves the device.
- An ordinary page stays exactly as it is. Nestcote checks the screen, finds nothing to cover, and stays out of the way.
- Then a private tab is opened.
- To a screen recorder, a private window is just black.
- Nestcote covers what it cannot check, and tells the child why.
Honest answers
Including the ones that don’t flatter us.
What actually leaves the phone?
For screen safety: nothing. Your child’s screen is read on their own device, judged there, and forgotten there. It is not stored, not uploaded, and not sent to us in any form. There is no account to create, and the app contains no analytics, no crash reporting and no tracking of any kind. Put the phone in aeroplane mode and protection carries on exactly as before, which is the simplest way to check us. The one exception we are building is an optional email alert telling you protection stopped: you would switch it on yourself, it can carry an email address, a device name you choose and a status word, it has no field for screen content, and in this beta it is not switched on at all.
Does it work inside YouTube, TikTok and games, or only in a browser?
Everywhere. Nestcote does not read apps, it reads the screen, so it makes no difference whether something arrives through YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, a browser, a game, or an app that does not exist yet. There is no list of apps to switch on: protection covers all of them from the moment you start it. Video counts too, because a video is frames on the screen and Nestcote checks the screen several times a second. The one thing it cannot see is a screen Android hides from every app, such as DRM video or a banking app; those arrive black, so Nestcote covers them rather than guessing, and you can allow the ones you trust.
Is this spying on my child?
No, and it cannot quietly become that. Nestcote shows a notification your child cannot dismiss, explains itself before it starts, and needs their agreement to run. It tells you that protection is on; it does not tell you where they went or who they talked to. Stealth monitoring is the thing we built against.
Will it drain the battery or slow the phone?
It runs on the device, so it does use battery. We tuned it on the cheapest Android we could buy, a Galaxy A21s, instead of a flagship, because that is the phone most children are handed. We have not published battery figures because we do not have honest ones yet; measuring them on real family phones is part of the beta.
Why not just use Family Link?
Use both. Family Link manages which apps your child has and for how long. Nestcote watches the screen itself, inside every app they are already allowed to use. They answer two different halves of the same worry: Family Link decides whether YouTube is on the phone, Nestcote deals with what appears once it is open.
What can Nestcote miss?
Content can appear for a moment before the shield covers it. Some screens cannot be analysed at all, so Nestcote covers those rather than pretending to see through them. And on an ordinary phone, a determined teenager can disable any app. Nestcote is one strong layer, not a replacement for the conversations you have with your child.
Can my child uninstall it?
There is a parent PIN, and the app tells you if protection stops unexpectedly. On a standard, non-managed Android, no app can make itself impossible to remove, so we made removal visible instead of pretending it is impossible.
Which phones, and when?
Android 11 and newer. There is no iPhone version, because iOS does not let an app see other apps’ screens. We open the beta nest by nest, a few families a week, and we will not promise a date we do not control.
What does it cost, and how do you make money?
The beta is free. After it, we plan a family plan of around $49 a year covering two or three devices. No ads, no data business. There is nothing to sell, because nothing leaves the phone.
Leave the light on.
Join the waiting list and we’ll invite your family when a place opens.
Join the waiting list