Some circumstances may require you to directly enter your license key into Chirp. The common reasons you may need to do this include:
- Non-credit-card purchase. If your license key was purchased by, or for you in a manner other than using our online store, you will need to manually retrieve your license key for initial entry in to Chirp.
- Expiration of your subscription. Chirp is licensed as an annual subscription to the Plum Canary sync service. This is controlled via a license key in your copy of Chirp. If your subscription expires, you will need to re-enter a new key after you renew your subscription.
- Resetting your local database. Occasionally, in order to resolve an issue with Chirp, you may end up deleting your Chirp data folder, which causes Chirp to re-obtain your task data from the server. Since your license key is stored in this folder, too, you will need to re-enter your key into Chirp after resetting your local database.
Obtaining / recovering, and re-entering your key requires only two short steps:
- Login at your Plum Canary website account and retrieve your license key;
- Copy / paste this license key into your copy of Chirp.
The specifics on how to do this are as follows.
Step 1 - log in and retrieve your key
Log into your Plum Canary website user account.
From your account page, click the link to “View your Entitlements.”
Locate the correct key. Find the row in the table that says "Chirp client Vxx.x.x" where the "Date ends" is the LATEST future date (which is usually one year after the date of your purchase.) Note: If you select a row where the "Date ends" is in the past, the key you obtain in the next step will not properly enable Chirp.
Copy the key. Click the link at the end of that row that says "Click here for key." This will open a new window where your License Key is shown. Using your mouse, select the license key characters and copy the key (using Edit->Copy in your browser).
Step 2 - installing your license key
Next, start Chirp, and select the menu item "Help->Register software". A dialog box will appear.
Paste the License Key into the License Key field. (Use the keyboard shortcut for your computer -- Control-V for Windows, Command-V for OS X.)
When you click this "OK" button, a window will appear thanking you for your purchase.
What you might be doing wrong if you're having trouble with the above steps
If the OK button does not switch to being selectable after you paste in the key, you have not entered a valid key. The reasons for this might include:
- Extra blank spaces at the beginning or end of the text field into which you pasted the license key
- Copying a key from the wrong row in your entitlements table
- Today may be a day that is outside the dates for which your key is valid
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