Windows 11 Will Hand Apps an Age Bracket Instead of a Birthday

Microsoft has documented a set of Windows 11 APIs that will tell a registered application which age bracket the signed-in user falls into, and whether that age has been independently verified, without disclosing a date of birth.

The GetUserAgeRangeAsync call returns one of five buckets: under 10, 10 to 12, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, and 18 and over. Each comes back as a numeric range, with 18 and over expressed as an open-ended upper bound. Where the platform cannot determine an age it returns null, and Microsoft instructs developers to fall back to their own default behaviour or age gate.

A companion call, GetAgeVerificationStatusAsync, reports whether the identity provider has independently verified the user’s age. Its possible responses are verified, unverified, opted out, temporarily unavailable and not applicable. Microsoft describes the status as indicating whether the identity provider has independently verified the age, which distinguishes it from an age the user has simply asserted.

Microsoft frames the design as letting apps meet child safety obligations without collecting, storing or processing dates of birth themselves. The documentation states that the API does not return age, date of birth or family relationship details.

Access is gated. The Digital Safety platform validates the calling application’s identity before returning any meaningful value, which Microsoft says prevents an unauthorised app from querying another app’s safety settings. Developers must register with that platform first.

The requirements are otherwise narrow: Windows 11 as a minimum, a Win32 COM surface in C or C++, and a user session with a Microsoft account signed in.

Microsoft suggests the signals for apps that carry user-generated content, social features or communication tools, that offer in-app purchases or virtual currencies, and that stream media with maturity ratings.

The documentation is published ahead of availability. The APIs are not enabled at runtime, and Microsoft says they are planned to be switched on in a future release later this year. Until then calls return an unknown age range and an unavailable verification status.

California has placed a comparable duty on operating system providers under its Digital Age Assurance Act, which takes effect on January 1st, 2027, and the state legislature recently passed a bill exempting open-source systems from it.

Sources: Microsoft

–

By the ID Tech Editorial Team