Safety settings for Xbox messages

Our message filtering helps you decide what you’d like to view and not view. The choice is yours.

Message filter settings work differently depending on what’s in a message. Here’s some detail on each.

This applies to both messages and message requests (that is, messages from people who aren’t already on your friends list). You've always been able to report offensive messages, now you have the opportunity to filter them out entirely.

At this level, our filter detects and blocks as much potentially offensive content as possible, without interfering with discussions of themes common to games and speech most people would consider normal. We’ll do our best to filter common vulgar words, bullying, anything related to sex, and any harmful content based on protected characteristics such as race, gender, and nationality.

We can’t promise to catch everything that could be harmful, but the Friendly setting is our best option for people wanting to block as much potentially offensive content as possible.

The Medium text filter aims for a balance between Friendly and Mature. This setting recognizes that people often use harsh words even when they’re not speaking with harmful intent. Accordingly, Medium will allow certain vulgar words so long as they’re not being used to bully someone, target protected characteristics (such as race, gender, and nationality), or reference sexual acts.

We recognize that everyone has their own opinions on what language is “bad” or “good.” While we develop more personalized safety features, we offer the Medium setting as a good starting point for people who want to be reasonably safe without overly filtering their experience.

Our Mature text filter is lenient around vulgarity but will block content we identify as harsh bullying, explicitly sexual, or severely targeting protected characteristics such race, gender, and nationality.

The Mature setting is intended for people who mostly trust who they’re talking to and don’t mind harsh language from those players.

With Unfiltered, our text filter is effectively off. We recommend this only for private conversations with friends you trust wholeheartedly.

This applies to pictures, videos, and animated content in messages and message requests (that is, messages from people who aren’t already on your friends list).

This filters out all media in messages, including content that’s not harmful at all. Use this setting to make sure you never receive offensive media in messages.

This setting aims to block anything that might be offensive, including nudity and most sexually suggestive and sexually explicit content.

Mature allows things that some people would find offensive, such as sexually suggestive content, while blocking nudity and content that our filters identify as explicitly sexual.

Unfiltered effectively turns our media filter off. We’ll block only content we detect as being illegal. We recommend this setting only for private conversations with friends you trust wholeheartedly.

This applies to messages and message requests (that is, messages from people who aren’t on your friends list).

This prevents opening any web links sent to you. This is helpful for blocking access to all web content received in Xbox messages. It can be useful to parents who want to minimize what their kids can access online.

Our Mature setting blocks websites our filters flag as containing sexual or malicious content. Please note, the internet is a big place, and we won’t be able to detect everything that might be bad. We’ll keep our filter as up to date as possible, but remember: Even for sites that aren’t blocked, you should only open links you trust.

At Unfiltered, our web filter is effectively off. Only content our filter detects as being illegal or definitely malicious will be blocked. We recommend this setting only for private conversations with friends you trust wholeheartedly. Remember: Select only links from online sources you trust, even when they’re sent by trusted friends.