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Age Signals & Declared Age Ranges
To comply with local laws and regulations, Bedrock Voice Chat implements Age Signals on Android and Declared Age Ranges on iOS to empower parents to make decisions about whether their child can use Bedrock Voice Chat to talk with others on servers they have access to.
This guide is meant to help you make informed decisions about whether your child should be using Bedrock Voice Chat to talk with others online in their Minecraft Server.
Bedrock Voice Chat is a proximity voice chat application that allows players of Minecraft Bedrock and Java edition to chat with each other. It allows for cross-platform, cross-game chat for players across the world through dedicated servers set up by that specific Minecraft server's community.
Bedrock Voice Chat does not share any personal identifiable information with any third-party services. Diagnostics logs, error logs, and some event tracking may be sent to analytics providers solely for the purposes of improving Bedrock Voice Chat. This information is not use to identify you or your child. Information such as Xbox Live gamertags and profile pictures are not collected, and we do not store your child's age or use it for any purposes, other than to communicate with Apple and Google per platform to determine whether Bedrock Voice Chat requires parental consent.
For the full privacy policy, check-out: https://github.com/Alaydriem/bedrock-voice-chat/blob/master/PRIVACY_STATEMENT.md
Bedrock Voice Chat servers are run by server operators who make a determination about what the minimum age is for their Minecraft sever. Bedrock Voice Chat honors this signal and sets the minimum age based upon server operator preference based upon the standards they have for their community. Individual Minecraft servers may have members run by adults, teenagers, or children under 18 with the technical skills to run their own local Minecraft Server.
Ideally, you should know who your child is interacting with online. For Minecraft Servers this is usually their group of friends from school or elsewhere, but could also be online communities that they founded or discovered for themselves.
You and your child should have a conversation together about what information is acceptable to share online with others.
Yes, Bedrock Voice Chat allows you to mute individual players. If someone you or your child are speaking with a member of a Minecraft server that you don't want them to talk with, you can disable voice communication with them by muting them in the app when they are in proximity range.
I recommend you connect with the server operator, as such interactions usually violate that communities terms of service, and can usually be dealt with by that communities moderation team or admin.
Bedrock Voice Chat presents these signals to comply with local laws and regulations, and in pairing with server operators. As of such there are two drivers that determine if the AGE warning is presented. Both must occur:
- The server operator has set a minimum age for their server
- Your device + Google or Apple account is set in a region where Age Signals or Declared Age Ranges are required.
You will not receive the age warnings in-app if both of these conditions are not met.
I do not live in a region that requires Age Signals or Declared Age Ranges from Google and/or Apple. What controls do I have for my child?
Bedrock Voice Chat operates on a server whitelist system. Your child will not be able to join voice chat with others unless they have been explicitly whitelisted to a given Minecraft Server.
If you do not wish for your child to engage in any online community discussions using Bedrock Voice Chat, ensure your child's device is setup with parental controls and/or app installation restrictions, and do not allow Bedrock Voice Chat to be installed on their device.
Not at this time. If you would like this feature, please create a Github issue or share your feedback on Discord
Bedrock Voice Chat cannot unlock this itself, and there is no override inside the app. BVC only asks your platform whether the signed-in user is above the server's minimum age — the answer comes from Google or Apple, and it is changed in their parental-control settings, not ours.
Once the platform reports a different answer, restart Bedrock Voice Chat and it will re-check.
Age Signals are derived from the Google account signed in on the device and any supervision applied to it through Google Family Link.
- In Family Link, open the child's profile.
- Confirm the child's birth date is correct — an incorrect birth date is the most common cause of an unexpected block.
- Grant the parental consent Google prompts for when a supervised account uses an app with communication features.
If the account is not supervised and the birth date is correct, the block is coming from the server's minimum age rather than from Google. Ask the server operator what they have set.
Google's documentation: Family Link Help.
Declared Age Ranges come from the Apple Account's date of birth and any Family Sharing supervision.
- In Settings → Family, open the child's account.
- Confirm the date of birth is correct.
- Review Screen Time → Content & Privacy Restrictions and allow the app to access the declared age range when prompted.
As on Android, if the account is not part of a Family Sharing group and the date of birth is correct, the restriction is the server's minimum age rather than Apple's.
Apple's documentation: Family Sharing.
The minimum age is yours to set, in config.hcl:
server {
age {
minimum = 13
}
}0 disables the check entirely. Any other value is clamped to 13–18. If you do not set it, it defaults to 13. See BVC Server Installation.