Activating, transferring, and managing your license

Tholos AI licensing is designed around the same principle as the product: no ongoing account relationship. This article covers how activation works, what happens when you're offline, how to move a license to a new machine, and what trial expiry actually does to your data.

How activation works

1. Purchase a license — your key is delivered to the purchase email.
2. In the app, open Settings and enter the key.
3. The app performs a one-time online activation — this is the only outbound call licensing ever makes. After it succeeds, the application runs fully offline; verification happens locally from then on.

The license is bound to your machine via a hardware fingerprint, and the trial works the same way — which is why reinstalling doesn't reset the 14-day clock.

What if I'm offline at activation?

A 24-hour grace period covers transient problems: if the activation check can't reach the server (or your system clock drifts), you can keep working and the full activation completes on the next connection. A network hiccup never blocks you mid-work.

Moving your license to a new machine

A license should follow you to a new laptop. The flow is deactivate, then reactivate:

1. On the old machine, release the license from Settings.
2. On the new machine, enter the same key and activate.

Self-serve reactivations are allowed within a reasonable yearly allowance; for legitimate cases beyond it — a dead machine you can't deactivate from, major hardware changes — contact support with your license key and we'll sort it out. Business volume keys manage seat counts centrally instead, so IT can reassign seats without per-machine self-service.

What happens when the trial (or license) expires

• Workflows lock — processing is replaced with an upgrade prompt.
• Your data is untouched. Knowledge Base indexes, sessions, downloaded models, and settings all remain on disk exactly as they were.
• The app still opens — Settings and model management stay accessible, so entering a key re-unlocks everything in place: no re-import, no re-download.

Recovering a lost license key

Sign in to your account to view your licenses and reveal license codes. If you can't access the account, email support from (or naming) your purchase email and we'll resend the key.

Privacy note

The activation server records the license key and a device fingerprint hash — never your documents, prompts, or outputs. After activation there is no periodic phone-home; verification is local. More in How Tholos AI keeps your data private.