Activate your licence or find a lost key

Rooster needs a licence once its free trial ends. You buy it on the pricing page, Creem emails you a licence key, and you enter that key in Rooster. The key is all Rooster asks for: there is no account to sign in to.

Find your licence key

The key is in the receipt email from Creem, sent to the address you bought with. Search your mail for Creem if you cannot see it, including your spam or junk folder.

If the email is gone:

1. In Rooster, choose Help > Manage Subscription, or go to rooster.cam/manage. Creem's customer portal opens in your browser.
2. Enter the email address you bought with, and open the link Creem sends you. Your orders are listed there; Creem's documentation says your licence key is accessible in the portal.
3. If you still cannot find the key, write to support@rooster.cam from the address you bought with, or contact support, and we will find it for you.

Rooster cannot show you the key once it is entered. Settings > Licence shows only its last few characters, enough to tell which key a Mac is using. Keep the receipt.

Enter your key

1. Open Settings, and choose Licence… in its header. The licence sheet opens.
2. Paste the key into the field and choose Activate. Spaces and line breaks copied with it do not matter.
3. The sheet says Licensed on this Mac.

If your trial has ended, choose Enter Your Key… first to show the field. The same sheet opens from the strip across the top of the main window.

Activating sends the key, a random identifier made on this Mac, the Mac's model identifier and the Rooster version to rooster.cam, which counts the Macs each licence is on. Nothing about your projects is sent. After that, Rooster checks the licence with rooster.cam from time to time, so it needs the internet now and then but not to edit.

If Rooster says it does not recognise the key, copy it again, whole, from the receipt.

Use your licence on two Macs

One licence activates Rooster on two Macs at a time. To move it to a new Mac, enter the key there. If both places are taken, the Mac that has gone longest without checking in with rooster.cam gives up its place straight away. You do not need the old Mac, and you do not need to write to us.

That is usually the Mac you have stopped using, but not always. A Mac on a subscription checks in about once a day while Rooster runs; one on a lifetime licence checks in about once a month, so a lifetime Mac you still use can have gone longer without checking in than one that was wiped last week. To be sure which Mac gives up its place, deactivate it first, below.

The Mac that gave up its place finds out the next time Rooster on it checks the licence, and from then its projects open read-only until you activate it again. Activating it again with the same key takes a place back the same way.

To choose which Mac gives up its place, free it yourself before you enter the key on the new one:

1. On the Mac you are leaving, open Settings > Licence.
2. Choose Deactivate This Mac, then Deactivate. The place is freed straight away.
3. Enter the key on the new Mac.

If the Mac you are leaving cannot reach rooster.cam, Rooster offers Remove From This Mac Anyway. That removes the licence from that Mac, but its place stays taken. That Mac stops checking in, so it is usually the one that gives up its place when you enter the key on another Mac while both places are taken.

When a licence lapses

A lifetime licence never lapses. A monthly or annual subscription lapses when it ends - after you cancel it at the customer portal, or when a payment fails and Creem cancels it. Rooster checks a subscription about once a day, so a lapse reaches your Mac within a day or so.

When it lapses, every project still opens and plays, and nothing is deleted. Editing, recording and export wait for a current licence, and the strip across the top of the window says the subscription has ended. Subscribe again from See Plans, then choose Enter a New Key… and enter the key from the new receipt. Everything you made is where you left it.

A Mac that cannot reach rooster.cam keeps working with the licence it has; nothing locks for being offline. After 30 days without a check, a subscription's licence sheet asks you to connect when you can, and Check Now checks at once.