Guardrails

Lets school IT hide distracting or unsafe features from students on school Chromebooks.

Guardrails is a free Chrome extension for school Chromebooks. School IT chooses which parts of Google Workspace students can't use, and they disappear from every student's screen: no pop-ups, nothing to click around. What you can switch off (each per group of students): - Docs, Sheets and Slides: web image search, pictures by URL, stock images and GIFs, YouTube and video, Explore, dictionary, link previews, comments and chat, emoji, voice typing, templates, Sheets functions that fetch from the web, and more. - Drive and sharing: files from outside the school or from other students (shows a clear page naming the owner), sharing, publishing to the web, transfer of ownership, email this file, make a copy, video playback. - Google Search: AI Overview, AI Mode, YouTube results, song lyrics, games. - Gmail, Chat and Classroom: chat in Gmail, the Classroom people list, GIFs and emoji. - Forms and Sites: sending or publishing a form, sharing or publishing a site, embeds and templates. - Gemini, side-panel apps, add-ons and the Apps Script editor. Built for shared Chromebooks: risky buttons start hidden at login, before settings load; Google can be kept in English; tabs reload when settings change; it keeps working on the last signed settings if the dashboard is down. One free dashboard (guardrails.aefai.org): set it up once in Google Admin, then every change reaches Chromebooks in minutes, with a history of who changed what. Students can press "Report something to support" to tell their school's admins when something is blocked that shouldn't be. Privacy: no browsing history, no ads, no trackers, nothing sold. Details: https://guardrails.aefai.org/privacy Install: Google Admin > Devices > Chrome > Apps & extensions > Users & browsers > pick the student unit > add Guardrails by ID > Force install. The dashboard's Setup guide walks you through it.