Frequently Asked Question

How do I install my purchased license on a Mac?
Last Updated 6 years ago

o, you've purchased a license for one or more of our plugins, eh? THANK YOU!

You may have questions now about how to get your plugins registered so that you may get on with making music. Fortunately for you, we have answers. Here goes...

First, you will (as part of the order fulfillment process) have received a few emails from Fastspring - an invoice/receipt and a Fulfillment email. Let's have a look:

Invoice/Receipt


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Order Fulfillment


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The latter email is the one we're going to want - the Fulfillment email contains the link that lets you download your key file. You'll see it just below where it says:

License Name:
License:

If you've purchased more than one plugin, there will be more than one link. Be sure to download them all, and be sure to download promptly after purchase - the links are only good for seven days afterwards.

Now, once you've clicked on the links and downloaded the files, we need to find them. On a Mac, that's typically going to be in your Downloads folder. Open Finder and go to your Downloads folder - it's usually in the sidebar on the left side of the Finder window. If you've changed the default download location for your browser, you'll need to find that folder.


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Now, right away we can see the one problem that you're possibly going to have. Safari has tried to make things easy for us, but instead has caused a problem. Safari can "see" that the file you're downloading is just a simple text file - so it renamed it to have .txt on the end. Bad Safari, bad! Sit! Stay!

Now, before we move on into solving the problem, let's make sure of something first. Both OS X and Windows both have features that allow the Finder (or Explorer for Windows) to hide well-known file extensions and instead just display a human-readable file kind or type. This is awfully nice of them, but it does get in the way of actually figuring out if we have a bad extension on a file, and of fixing it if we do. Can't change what we can't see, eh?

So...open a Finder window by clicking the Finder icon in the Dock. Go to the Finder menu and choose Finder > Preferences. When the Preferences dialog opens, choose the Advanced icon.


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The important bit is what we've circled above. Your Finder may not have the option set to show all filename extensions, and that will block you from seeing the problem if Safari has added .txt to the end of the filename. It may LOOK like it is correct, but if you do a Get Info on the file, it will show that it is a "Plain text" instead of a ".key" or "Keynote presentation" file. Make sure this option is checked prior to proceeding.

We need to rename our key files IF they end in .txt like you see above. If the file ends in .key and if we can Get Info (File > Get Info or Command-I) on the file and it says that it REALLY ends in .key (sometimes Finder will hide file extensions), then we can skip renaming it.

Note that if you have Keynote installed on your Mac that the Finder may tell you that the key file is a Keynote file...it is NOT. Don't try to launch the file by double-clicking, don't open it with Keynote...just leave it alone other than for what we tell you here. That way lies madness. :)

The key file MUST be named as we sent it to you (minus the .txt if it was added).

If you're having trouble finding the file, all of our key files' names begin with 47225 - there's a reason for that, but it doesn't matter right now.

Now, let's rename the file, because in this case we can see that we need to. We can either right-click, ctrl-click, or click once to highlight, and then a second click to open the rename edit box (NOT a double-click, this is much slower). When the file is ready to be renamed it will look like this:


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Using the mouse or cursor keys, carefully remove the .txt from the end of the name. Don't replace it with spaces, DELETE it. Press the Return/Enter key when done. It should look like this:


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Now, once the file is correctly renamed, let's copy it to where it belongs. If you're using VST Plugins, they're likely installed in

/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST

If you're using Audio Units, they're in

/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components

VST3 Plugins? No problem:

/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3

RTAS for older versions of Pro Tools?

/Library/Application Support/Digidesign/Plug-Ins

AAX Plugins for Pro Tools 10/11?

/Library/Application Support/Avid/Audio/Plug-Ins

If you're using more than one format, then bear in mind we'll need to put a copy of the key file in all required places.

Now, back in the Finder, make sure your key file is still highlighted, and the Finder window has the mouse focus (is most forward and selected). Press Command-C (Apple-Key-C, Cloverleaf-C, Use the mouse to do Edit > Copy - whatever is most convenient for you). This will place a reference to the file onto the clipboard, which we'll need in a moment.

Now, we need to go to the plugin folder where we're going to put a copy of the key file. Once again, if you're using multiple plugin formats, you'll need to place a copy of the key file every place that you have the plugin. For the purposes of our example, we're going to show the Audio Unit, but simply replace the word "Component" with the abbreviation "VST" and repeat the process and you'll be set.

From the Finder menus, choose Go > Go to folder..., or press Shift-Command-G. You'll get a dialog where you can type in the name of a folder, thus:


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The folder name you see above is exactly what you need to type in for Audio Units. Replace "Components" by "VST" for VST plugins. Once you've typed in the folder name, click "Go". This will take the Finder to our destination folder.


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We see here that the plugin is already in place from where we installed it earlier (you DID test before purchasing, right? That's why we make the demos available...). Now that we're in the destination folder the rest is easy. Just click Edit > Paste, or type Command-V to paste the key file we copied earlier into the folder.


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You're done! Enjoy! The next time you launch your host and use the plugin, Any unregistered messages should go away, replaced by a brief thank-you message that can be dismissed by clicking on it (without taking you to the website, as it would during Evaluation).

If the following doesn't work, then you can reach us at [email protected], or at http://www.stillwellaudio.com/support, or participate in our community support network at http://www.stillwellaudio.com/forums

Hope that helps.

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