Safe Sharing with the Tynker App

With Tynker’s publishing feature, kids can share the amazing projects they’ve built and see what others are making. The Tynker app allows children to publish projects that they’ve built to the Tynker community. Other kids can see published projects, “heart” them to bookmark them and show support, explore projects to see how they work, then remix and publish their own versions. Because it is very important to us that the app is a safe place for kids to explore, Tynker moderators approve every project that is published before any users can see it.

If you don’t have the app, you can download it here:

How to Publish

Create a project by clicking “Workshop” and then choosing one of over 100 templates or starting with a blank template. Once you’re happy with your project, go back to the home screen and click on “Projects.” If you’ve never published the project before, it will show up in your “Unpublished” list. Click the “Publish” button and confirm that you want to publish. Your project will move to your “Published” list and will have a purple “In Review” tag on it. This means that it has been added to our approval queue and you should expect it to be published within 24 hours (excluding weekends and holidays).

Safe to Browse

When a child publishes a project, it does not immediately become visible to other users. Instead, it enters a queue of projects that are reviewed by Tynker moderators. We look through every project to make sure that it follows our publishing rules before approving it for publication. This ensures that Tynker Publishing has a safe community that parents and teachers are comfortable with their child using.

We do not allow children to message each other or comment on each other’s projects.

Publishing Rules

When approving projects for publication, we are very strict about what we allow through. It’s important to us that parents and teachers feel comfortable with their children using the Tynker app, and children’s safety is our first priority. If there is ever a project that we feel is on the borderline, we err on the side of not exposing children to material that might not be appropriate for them. These are our Tynker Community Rules:

If you and your child are ever unsure why we have rejected a project or want clarification on these rules, please let us know at support@tynker.com. Remind your children to never use their full name or pictures of their faces online—and also not to share this information about their friends. We reject projects where children use their full names or pictures of their own faces or their friends’ faces.

Reporting Inappropriate Content

We’re very careful when approving content. We don’t use an automated system because we know that these systems miss a lot of important cases (kids often know that they can misspell inappropriate words or add extra spaces in order to fool these autofilters). But that doesn’t mean we never make mistakes. Before your child uses the Tynker app, make sure you tell them that they can report any projects that they think are inappropriate or that make them uncomfortable. To report a project, they can click on the flag at the bottom right of any published project. We review any projects that are reported to see if they should be removed.

Opting Out of Publishing

Not comfortable with your child or your students sharing projects? We totally understand. You can easily turn off publishing from within the app or your parent/teacher dashboard. Just go to “Settings” and uncheck the “Allow project publishing” option.

Featured Projects

We’ve been so impressed over the past month with the creativity we’ve seen in published projects. Tell your child that if they put a lot of effort into a project, it might get featured so that many other kids can see it. Here are a few projects that we thought were really exciting and creative.

“JETPACK PILOT” by stradyvarious

“Pirate Level Game” by iforgot

“draw!” by livingcrate417

We’re constantly working to improve the user experience of our app. Please let us know what we can be doing better and what you’d like to see in our products!