The trial
Seven days, with everything switched on. The download itself needs no account and no card; the trial starts when you sign in inside the app, which is what ties it to you rather than to one machine — so a new Mac does not start the clock again, and a reinstall does not end it early.
One trial per account. If you buy first and sign in afterwards you do not burn it: buying is not the same as trying, and the account stays trial-eligible.
Activating a Mac
Signing in on a Mac activates it against your licence. A Standard licence covers two Macs; a Power licence covers three.
A Mac is identified by a fingerprint your own Mac computes: a salted hash of the machine’s identifier, made on the Mac before anything is sent. The raw identifier never leaves it, and the hash is not reversible into one.
Moving to a new Mac
When every seat is taken, the app does not simply refuse. It lists the Macs on your licence and offers to release one, so the new machine can take its place. Your account page does the same thing from a browser, which is the way to do it when the old Mac is not in front of you.
There is a limit on how often that can happen: four releases per licence in any rolling thirty days, and the app tells you how long to wait if you reach it. It exists to stop a single licence being rotated around an office every fortnight, and it is set high enough that migrating your own machines never touches it.
Working offline
Your Mac holds a signed licence token that is good for fourteen days. Within that window YapScribe needs no network at all for licensing — on a plane, on a locked-down network, at a cabin. The app renews the token quietly whenever it does have a connection.
Past fourteen days offline, it asks to check in once. That single number is three things at once: the offline grace, how long a revoked licence can still be used on a machine nobody can reach, and — by design — the length of the refund window.
What YapScribe connects to on its own
Two things without you asking, and you can watch both with Little Snitch or LuLu. That licence renewal runs about once a day. The updater asks its feed whether there is a newer build, also about once a day. Neither one carries a word you said. Everything else is something you started: signing in, a model download, a look at the current price after your first sign-in. Dictating with polishing off makes no connection at all, and dictating with cloud polishing on makes exactly one request — to the provider you chose, or to ai.yapscribe.com when you use YapScribe credits.
A year of updates
Every licence includes a year of updates from the day you buy. After that year the app you have keeps working for ever. Newer builds need an optional $19 update pass for another year.
A build newer than your updates window will say so instead of installing and misbehaving. Nothing you already have stops working when the year ends.
Cloud credits are separate
Credits are not part of the licence. They are $10 for 100,000 words of cloud polishing, bought when you want them, and the app is complete without ever buying one — polishing with your own key, or with a model on your Mac, costs us nothing and costs you nothing further.
Refunds
Fourteen days, for any reason. What happens to the licence, the Macs on it and any credits is set out on the refunds page.