Activating Your License

After you purchase Pulse Pro or a Pulse Add-on, you receive a license key by email from Lemon Squeezy. This guide covers activation, deactivation, moving to a new Mac, and recovering a lost key.

What You Receive at Purchase

Lemon Squeezy emails you a receipt within seconds of payment. The email contains:

  • Your license key — a long string of letters, digits, and dashes

  • A link to the billing portal (used to cancel an Add-on subscription or update payment details)

  • A download link for Pulse, if you bought through the Lemon Squeezy product page

Save the receipt email. The license key is the only thing Pulse needs to unlock features.

Activating

  1. Open Pulse and go to Settings → License.

  2. Paste your license key into the single activation field.

  3. Click Activate.

Pulse validates the key with Lemon Squeezy and automatically detects whether the key is:

  • A Pro license (one-time purchase, standard or Founding Edition)

  • A Public Page Add-on subscription (standard or Founding Edition once the Add-on offers one)

  • A Ultra bundle (standard or Founding Edition) — activates every current Add-on included in the bundle

You do not need to choose a category in advance — one field handles all of them.

On success, the license status in Settings flips to Active and any unlocked features appear in the UI immediately.

Where the Key Is Stored

Pulse stores your license key in the macOS Keychain (Data Protection Keychain), not in plain config files. Your config file only records the activation status. This makes the key inaccessible to other apps without explicit user authorization, and it survives most app reinstalls on the same machine.

If you activated on Pulse v0.0.x and upgraded to v0.0.5 or later, your old key was in the legacy login keychain. v0.0.5+ uses the more secure Data Protection Keychain, so the old key is no longer visible to Pulse. Paste the key again from your Lemon Squeezy receipt and click Activate. Your purchase is unaffected — only the local activation state needs to be refreshed.

Moving Between Macs

Your Pro license includes a small number of activations so you can run Pulse on more than one Mac you own (laptop + desktop, for example). To move to a new Mac:

  1. On the old Mac: Settings → License → Deactivate. This frees an activation slot.

  2. On the new Mac: install Pulse and paste the same key into Settings → License → Activate.

If you forget to deactivate the old Mac (sold it, wiped it, etc.) and run out of activation slots, contact support — we can free a slot manually.

Deactivating

In Settings → License, click Deactivate next to the relevant entry (Pro, an Add-on, or a bundle). Pulse:

  1. Tells Lemon Squeezy to free your activation slot on that machine

  2. Removes the key from the macOS Keychain

  3. Returns affected features to their Free state on the next app launch

For an Add-on subscription (Public Page Add-on or Ultra), deactivating does not cancel the subscription itself — it just stops this Mac from using it. To stop being billed, cancel from the Lemon Squeezy billing portal link in your receipt email, or via the Lemon Squeezy Customer Portal at https://app.lemonsqueezy.com.

If a Feature Stops Working

Pulse re-validates your license with Lemon Squeezy in the background. If validation fails (for example, a subscription stopped renewing), Pulse:

  1. Allows a grace period of up to 7 days of offline use, in case it's a transient network problem

  2. After the grace period, downgrades affected features back to Free

  3. Notifies you in Settings → License so you can re-activate

If you believe this is a mistake, paste your key into Settings → License → Activate again — that triggers a fresh validation.

Lost Your License Key?

Search your inbox for lemonsqueezy or Pulse. If you cannot find the receipt:

  1. Visit https://app.lemonsqueezy.com and click Customer Portal.

  2. Enter the email address you used at checkout.

  3. Lemon Squeezy emails you a one-time login link; click it to see all your Pulse orders and license keys.

Refunds

Pulse offers a 14-day money-back guarantee for both Pro purchases and the first billing period of Add-on subscriptions. Email support within 14 days of purchase to request a refund. See Plans and Pricing for details.

Next Steps

  • Plans and Pricing — what each plan unlocks

  • Using the Public Page Add-on — first uses of your new Add-on

  • Exports and Certificates — what Pro adds to the export pipeline

‹ Granting macOS Permissions

Verifying Records ›