Every copy of s1ft starts with a 14-day trial that holds nothing back. When it runs out, you buy a license once, paste the key that arrives by email, and you’re done. This page covers all of it, including what happens to your meetings if you never buy.
The 14-day trial
The trial starts the first time you open s1ft. There’s no sign-up, no account, and no card — the clock starts on first launch and runs for 14 calendar days.
The trial withholds nothing. Recording, automatic meeting detection, on-device transcription, speaker labels, AI summaries with your own provider, and the Summary skill all work exactly as they do with a license. A trial and a licensed install have the same capability.
A few things worth knowing:
- The end date is fixed at first launch. Moving your Mac’s clock backward doesn’t buy you extra days. s1ft measures elapsed time against the latest clock reading it has ever seen, and that reading never goes down.
- Reinstalling doesn’t reset it. The trial is anchored in two places, so removing one restores it from the other.
- The trial is per-install, not per-meeting. Nothing is counted or metered.
Where the trial countdown appears
Click the s1ft icon in your menu bar. The countdown sits in the status header at the top of the panel, right under the recording status, with a Buy button next to it.
The wording changes as the trial runs down:
| Days left | What the row says |
|---|---|
| 4 or more | Trial — 12 days left |
| 3 or 2 | Trial ends in 3 days |
| 1 | Trial ends today — last day |
In the final three days the row turns orange and the clock icon picks up a warning badge, so you see it without opening Settings. Once you activate a license, the row disappears for good — a paid user is never reminded of a trial again.
Buying a license
s1ft is a one-time purchase. Until you activate a key, the app gives you three ways to reach checkout, and all three open license.s1ft.app/buy in your browser:
- Buy, next to the trial countdown in the menu bar panel
- Buy a license…, at the bottom left of the License window
- Buy a lifetime license, on the locked screen you get if the trial runs out — see When the trial ends
All three are for installs that aren’t licensed yet. Once a key is active, they’re gone: the countdown row disappears, and so does the Buy a license… link in the License window. You bought s1ft for life, so there’s nothing left to buy. Everything else in that window stays where it was, including the box for pasting a replacement key.
Wherever you start from, the address s1ft opens is plain, with no query string attached. Opening it transmits nothing about you, your Mac, your trial, or any meeting you’ve recorded.
What the license covers, in the same words you’ll see at checkout and in the app:
- License: lifetime — every version, forever
- Devices: all Macs you personally use; no deactivation needed
There’s no seat count to manage and nothing to deactivate when you replace a Mac. Paste the same key on the new machine.
For payment mechanics, tax, and refunds, see Billing & license.
Activating your key
One purchase produces one signed key, and it arrives by email at the address you used at checkout. The email’s subject line is Your s1ft license key, and the key sits between two ----- lines.
Keep that email. It is the only copy of your key, and you’ll need it if you reinstall or move to a new Mac. There is no account, no download page, and no self-service portal to fetch it from.
Paste and activate
- Copy everything between the two
-----lines in the license email, including both lines. - Click the s1ft menu bar icon and choose License….
- Paste into the License key box. Line breaks, quoted replies, and stray spaces from your email client are fine — s1ft cleans them up before checking the key.
- Click Activate.
On success the window shows Activated. Thank you for buying s1ft. and switches its title to Your s1ft license, with the name and email the key was issued to, the license ID, and the issue date underneath.
Activation runs entirely on your Mac. s1ft checks the key’s signature against public keys compiled into the app — no network request, no machine fingerprint, nothing sent anywhere. It works on a plane.
If the key is rejected
s1ft never shows a generic “invalid key” message. Every rejection names the cause and tells you what to do next. The common ones:
| What s1ft says | What to do |
|---|---|
| That doesn’t look like a complete license key. | Copy everything between the two ----- lines again and paste it once more. |
| The key is incomplete — part of it is missing or damaged. | Same: re-copy the whole block from the email, both ----- lines included. |
| This key has been altered or was copied incompletely. | Copy the key straight from the email again and paste it without editing it. |
| This key was issued with a newer signing identity than this version of s1ft knows. | Update s1ft to the latest version, then paste the key again. |
| This license was withdrawn by s1ft. | Email [email protected] with your order number. |
A rejected key never disturbs the license you already have. If you’re licensed and paste something that doesn’t check out, your existing license stays active — the window says as much: “Entering a new key replaces this one. Your current license stays active unless the new key checks out.”
Checking or replacing your license
License… stays in the menu after you activate. Open it any time to see which license is active and who it’s issued to, or to paste a replacement key.
If you can’t find your email
Write to [email protected] from the address you used at checkout and ask for a re-send. Every issued key is recorded, so a re-send delivers the same key — you’re never charged twice and never issued a second one.
When the trial ends
If the 14 days run out without a license, s1ft locks. The menu bar panel is replaced entirely by a locked screen: no recording controls, no meeting detection toggle, no transcription, no library.
The screen reads:
Your s1ft trial has ended
Buy a license to start recording again. Your existing meetings are untouched and still on this Mac.
Five actions are available, and nothing else:
- Open meetings folder — reveals your meetings in Finder
- Buy a lifetime license — opens the purchase page
- Enter a license key… — opens the License window
- Email [email protected] — opens a pre-addressed message
- Quit s1ft
If the trial expires while s1ft is capturing or still processing a meeting, the lock waits until that meeting finishes. You never lose a recording to the clock running out mid-call. Activating a key goes the other way: it takes effect immediately, even in the middle of a meeting.
Your meetings are never touched
A lock is a gate on the app, not on your files. The locked screen writes nothing and deletes nothing. Your meetings folder is byte-for-byte identical before and after a lock, which is why the screen tells you where it is in plain language:
Your meetings are still on this Mac
Every recording, transcript and summary is where it has always been:
~/Documents/s1ft MeetingsThey open in QuickTime Player, TextEdit and Preview without s1ft.
The path shown is wherever you pointed s1ft, so it matches the folder in Settings > General. WAV, Markdown, and JSON files all open in standard macOS apps with s1ft closed or uninstalled. See Finding your recordings for what each file in a meeting folder contains.
Getting help
For anything you can’t resolve from the messages in the app, email [email protected]. Useful things to include: your order number, the email address you bought with, and the exact message s1ft showed you.
One case always needs a human. If the license window or the locked screen says This license is no longer valid — meaning the key was withdrawn — write to support with your order number. That state is never something you can fix by pasting the key again.
What’s next
- Billing & license — payment through Paddle, tax, and the refund window.
- Getting started — install, onboarding, permissions, and your first recording.
- Finding your recordings — where meetings live on disk and what each file is.
- Settings reference — including how to change your meetings folder.