Terms
These are the terms between you and Itch Studio Limited for xgate: the program on your Mac, the service at xgateguard.com, and Plus.
Last updated 9 October 2026.
Who
Itch Studio Limited, registered in England and Wales, company number 14729010. Email: support@itch.studio. In these terms, "you" means the person who installs XGate on a Mac, whom we call a Member, or the person a Member asks to hold the keys, whom we call a Guardian. By installing XGate, or by accepting an invitation to be a Guardian, you agree to these terms.
Your Mac, and adults only
You may install XGate only on a Mac that is yours or that you are entitled to administer, and only if you are 18 or over. XGate makes real changes to the Mac: it removes administrator rights from your account and gives the only standing administrator password to your Guardian. Installing it is your choice to have that done.
The Guardian
A Guardian is a person you choose. They hold the administrator password and the recovery key, decide your requests, and can change the rules. Itch Studio Limited is not a party to that relationship: we do not choose your Guardian, vouch for them, or stand in for them. If your Guardian cannot be reached, the Mac keeps its rules, and handing the keys to someone else takes the waiting period the rules set. A Guardian agrees, on accepting, to keep the keys where the Member cannot reach them and not to hand them over when asked.
XGate as Guardian
On Plus you can choose XGate itself as your Guardian. There is then no person to ask. An admin window starts a day after you ask for it, a rule you relax takes effect a day later, handing the keys to a person takes a week, and leaving takes a day with a contact who does not object or a week without one. Nobody, including our staff, can make any of these sooner, and there is no support process that hands over a key by email, chat or telephone. The keys stay on the Mac itself; the service holds none.
What XGate is not
XGate is not a wall against a determined administrator. Anyone with an administrator password, or with physical control of a Mac, can with effort defeat any program on it. What XGate promises is that the keys are held by someone else, that tampering is seen and reported to the Guardian, and that undoing the rules takes time. It is not a security product, a safeguarding product, or a substitute for medical or psychological help.
Accounts
A Member signs in by a link sent to their email address. A Guardian signs in with a password. Keep your email account and your password safe, because what is done from your account counts as done by you. Tell us at once if you believe an account has been used by someone else.
Plus and the free plan
The free plan covers one Mac on its own, with one set of up to 20 sites or apps, a Guardian who approves in person at the Mac, and automatic updates. It needs no account. Plus is a subscription paid by the Member at the price shown at checkout, by the year or by the month, which renews until it is cancelled. You can cancel at any time from your page, and Plus then runs to the end of the period already paid for. Within 14 days of any payment you can ask for that payment to be refunded, for any reason, by writing to support@itch.studio. When Plus ends, no rule is relaxed: sets beyond the free plan's one become dormant, and extra devices keep their rules but take no changes. We may change the price for a new period after telling you by email before that period begins. A Guardian pays nothing.
Proper use
You must not use XGate to control another adult's Mac without their knowledge and agreement, to interfere with the service, or in any way that is unlawful, and you must not install it for anyone under 18. We may suspend an account that is used in any of these ways.
Availability and updates
We provide the service as it is and work to keep it running, but it may be interrupted from time to time. The Mac keeps its rules without the service. The app updates itself on Plus, and by download on the free plan. An update may change how things work, and we describe what changed with each one.
Liability
Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that the law does not allow to be limited. Otherwise, our liability to you for anything arising from XGate is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, and we are not liable for loss of data, for loss of access to a Mac, or for any loss arising from how you or your Guardian used or kept the keys. You hold no copy of the keys by design. That is the product, and you choose it knowing so.
Ending
You can leave XGate from the Mac at any time through the leaving flow, which restores your administrator rights after its waiting period and keeps your account and your rules. You can delete your account from your page once no Mac of yours is running XGate. We may end the service for an account that breaks these terms, with notice where we reasonably can give it.
Law
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction, without taking away any protection the law gives you as a consumer where you live.
Changes to these terms
When these terms change, the date at the top changes with it, and we tell you by email before a change that affects you takes effect. If you carry on using XGate after that date, the new terms apply.