The full answer
The role has one power, which is to answer their requests: to end protection, or to end a Lockdown sooner, both about the blocks on one iPhone, and, rarely, a key handover someone began in an earlier version of Fold’em. Fold’em is a commitment device: it moves a decision to a calmer moment and puts a person in the loop, and it is not a treatment service, not medical advice and not a monitoring tool. Nothing you are shown would tell you whether somebody gambled, because nothing about apps, sites or browsing is sent to a supporter at any point.
What the role can actually reach
The whole authority a keyholder holds is an answer to a request: if they ask to end protection, or to end a Lockdown sooner, you refuse or you agree. There is no setting of theirs you can change, no block you can add or remove, no clock you can move, and no way to end their protection from yours.
Agreeing to end protection is not a button. Both answers sit behind Face ID, a check that it is really you holding the phone. Say no is one tap in your app after that check. Agreeing is a code: Show my code puts it on your screen, behind the same check, and they scan it off your screen, which is meant to happen standing next to you. No button or link in Fold’em approves ending protection. A yes to end a Lockdown sooner can be given from anywhere, and it lets them end that Lockdown and nothing more: their usual protection stays on.
What you can shape is your own notifications, not theirs. Settings › Notifications carries a switch for Milestones and one for Protection ending, set once for everyone you stand with, and those switches are private: nothing about them reaches the person, and nothing about them changes what anybody else is told. Requests have no switch, on purpose: an ask for support and every request reach you whatever you set, and wait on their row besides. What they share in the first place is one switch in their own Settings, set once for everyone in their circle, and if they turn their run off you are shown that it is off.
What no app on that phone can reach
Fold’em blocks gambling apps and betting sites on the one iPhone it is installed on. Four things sit outside that boundary, and they are not defects.
A second phone or tablet is a different device with its own settings. A desktop or laptop is not running any of this. A betting shop or a casino is a place, not an app. Cash leaves no trace on a phone at all. None of the four produces an event, a count or a notification, so a calm row is not evidence that none of them happened.
The product's own design says the same thing about permissions: a person can revoke the Screen Time authorization the blocks are built on. What Fold’em does about that is detect it and show it on their row, not prevent it. Social cost, rather than a lock in the operating system, is the mechanism.
What the role is actually for
The value of a keyholder is that somebody who is not the person gambling knows what is happening, and that ending protection has to be said out loud to a person rather than done quietly in a settings screen. That is what makes a request to end protection a real moment, and it is why agreeing to one is deliberately something that can only happen face to face.
Everything the role asks of you is bounded. You answer a request to end protection if one ever opens, and a request to end a Lockdown sooner if they send one. Between those moments there is nothing to check and no schedule you are on.
If you are worried about them
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Read the status word for the fact
Their row on People says what the blocks are doing, in a few fixed words. Protection on means the phone confirmed them recently; Protection off means they are not running; Not confirmed yet means the phone has not confirmed them lately; Protection at risk means something could open a gap soon. Nothing else on the row is a claim about the blocks.
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Send a message rather than an alarm
Their page has three tiles: Message, Call, which reads Add number until you save theirs, and Encourage, which sends one of three fixed nudges with no words of your own. There is no escalation path built into the product, because there is nothing further for a keyholder to do.
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Point them at a helpline if it is beyond a message
The helplines on Contact and in SOS are independent of Fold’em and are answered by people who do this for a living. The app carries a directory of them too, chosen by the region the phone is set to.
Where the line between supporting somebody and taking charge of them falls is the subject of someone you love is gambling.
What this does not do
Nothing in Fold’em makes you accountable for another person's behaviour, and nothing in it is designed to. It gives you one answer to give, and it makes sure you see it when the blocks stop running.
It also does not make you a support service. Fold’em is a commitment device, not a treatment service and not a monitoring tool, and nothing on these pages is medical advice. If holding the key is more than you want to carry, stepping away is a supported act rather than a failure, and their protection continues without you.
Write to us and a person reads it. We answer within two working days, and we would rather hear the question twice than not at all.