Sworn

Guide

Block porn on
your Windows PC.

Windows has parental controls for a child's account, but nothing built in that filters adult sites on a PC you own and administer. The options that actually exist are Family Safety, DNS settings, the hosts file, and an accountability filter. Here's the honest trade-off of each.

Jump to the steps Sworn for Windows

Free malware and ad/tracker blocking, always. Pornography and other categories, plus partner alerts: 7-day free trial, then $7/month for your phone and your computers together.

Option 1 · Built in

What Windows gives you.

The honest part first: Windows has no adult-website filter for your own account. Everything built in is designed for a parent supervising someone else's account, which is a different problem with a different shape.

  1. A

    Microsoft Family Safety

    Add a child account to a family group and you get web filtering, screen time and app limits. The filtering itself is real, but it lives in Microsoft Edge — so to make it hold, turning web filtering on also blocks other browsers from running at all. It works for a young child. For an adult managing their own PC it doesn't apply, because you'd be both the parent and the child, and you can lift any of it from the same account.

  2. B

    Edge Kids Mode

    A separate, locked-down browsing profile inside Edge. Leaving it takes a password if you set one — but it covers that one browser window and nothing else on the machine, and any other browser is a click away.

  3. C

    Browser extensions

    Quick to add, and genuinely useful as a speed bump. They cover one browser, they don't apply in a private window unless you allow that explicitly, and removing one is three clicks in the same browser they're protecting.

The common gap is that none of these covers the whole PC, and none of them tells anyone if the filter comes off.

Option 2 · System-wide

DNS settings and the hosts file.

There is a system-wide lever, and it's the same one every serious filter uses. Every app looks up website addresses through a service called DNS. Point that lookup at a filtering provider and known adult sites stop resolving — in every app rather than one browser. It isn't a VPN, so banking, Teams and everything else keep working normally.

  1. Open Settings → Network & internet. Pick the Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection you're using.
  2. Find DNS server assignment and choose Edit. Switch it from Automatic (DHCP) to Manual, turn on IPv4, and enter a filtering DNS provider's addresses.
  3. Save, and it applies to the whole PC. Do it again for any other adapter you use — this setting is per-connection, so a laptop that uses both Wi-Fi and a dock needs both.

The hosts file (C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts) is the other common suggestion. It works, it needs an administrator text editor, and it's a hand-maintained list that ages the moment you stop maintaining it.

The honest limits, and they matter. A DNS filter blocks domains from a list, so it can miss a brand-new site. A browser that turns on its own encrypted DNS can look addresses up without going through Windows at all, so it slips past both of these. And a setting you changed for yourself has no accountability — the same Settings screen changes it back in fifteen seconds, and nobody is told. That last piece is what Option 3 adds.

Option 3 · With accountability

An accountability filter (Sworn).

Sworn uses that same DNS lever. A small Windows service sends every lookup, from every app and browser, through your Sworn account, and what it adds is the missing piece: someone you trust is told if you switch it off or remove it. It's one honest option, not the only answer.

Start on your phone. Sworn for Windows pairs with your Sworn account rather than standing alone, so install the phone app first and pick your categories there. The PC then inherits them, so it's one account, one partner and one alert stream rather than a second thing to manage.

  1. Install Sworn on your phone and pick pornography. Add gambling, social media, online shopping, gaming or VPN/proxy too if you want. Malware and ad/tracker blocking are free forever; the other categories and partner alerts come with a 7-day free trial, then $7/month covering your phone and your computers.
  2. Download the Windows installer and run it. It's signed by Snowleopard Labs LLC and Windows asks once for permission. When it finishes, a Sworn icon sits in the system tray next to the clock — dimmed, because your DNS is not changed until you pair.
  3. Pair the PC with a code from your phone. In Sworn on your phone: Settings → Add a computer. It shows a short code good for ten minutes. Click the tray icon → Pair with your phone… and type it in. The icon turns solid: protected.
  4. (Optional) Add an accountability partner. They get an invite to confirm, and at most one reminder; they have a week to click it. After that they only ever see a count of blocked attempts and the category, plus a note if you unblock a category and an email if the filter is paused, removed or goes quiet. Never a URL, never your history, never a device's name.

Download for Windows How it works on the PC

Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit · about 9 MB · signed by Snowleopard Labs LLC.

No VPN, so your work tools and VPN client keep working. System-wide, so it's every app and not one browser. No screenshots and no log of the sites you visit; blocked attempts are kept only as short-lived tallies that power your own in-app view and expire after 7 days, and a partner sees a number and a category, never a site. The same honest limit as Option 2 applies. A browser running its own encrypted DNS can go around it, and we say so on the support page rather than pretending otherwise.

Which should I pick?

Which one is right for you?

Supervising a child's PC? Family Safety is built for exactly that — a parent runs it from a different account, and the child can't lift it. Filtering your own PC? Every native lever lives on a screen you administer, so the technical block was never the hard part. The missing piece is accountability: someone told the moment the filter comes off, which is the one thing none of the built-in options do and the whole reason an accountability filter exists.

Using another computer too? There are companion guides for Linux, Mac and Chromebook, and the same account covers all of them.

Every app on the PC —
with someone in your corner.

Start on your phone, then pair the PC. About five minutes for both.

Download on the App Store Get it on Google Play

Already have Sworn on your phone? Download the Windows installer.