Short Leash Pro and licenses

Short Leash's core is free: sites, runtimes, HTTPS, dumps, logs and import, for personal and commercial work. Short Leash Pro is a yearly subscription that adds the rest. Prices are on the Pricing page.

The trial

Every Pro feature is on for 14 days from the first time you open a version of Short Leash with Short Leash Pro. There's no card and no account, and the trial runs once per computer. Settings › License shows how many days are left, and a banner on the Pro screens says so in the last 7.

Buy and activate

1. Choose Buy Short Leash Pro in Settings › License, or go to Pricing. Polar takes the payment and emails your license key, which starts with LEASH-.
2. In Settings › License, paste the key and choose Activate. Short Leash names this computer after itself in your license; change the name before you activate if you like.

From a terminal:

leash license activate LEASH-XXXX-XXXX --name "Work laptop"

A license works on 2 computers at a time, Mac or Windows.

Move to another computer

On the computer you're leaving, choose Deactivate this computer in Settings › License (or run leash license deactivate), then activate the key on the new one. If the old computer is gone, choose Manage license: it opens Polar's customer portal, where you can free its slot, and also renew, cancel or download invoices.

A license file copied to another computer does nothing there: each activation belongs to the computer it was made on.

Offline

Short Leash checks your license with Polar a minute after it starts and about once a day after that, and an hour later when a check fails. Short Leash Pro stays on for 30 days after the last check that reached Polar, so working offline, on a plane or behind a VPN changes nothing. A check that fails never turns Pro off; only Polar saying the license has ended does, or 30 days without reaching it. Choose Check again to check now.

If your computer's clock is set more than 2 hours behind a time it showed before, Short Leash Pro waits until the clock catches up. Set the date and time correctly and choose Check again.

What a check sends is on the Privacy policy: the key, this computer's name and a hash of its ID.

When a trial or license ends

• Pro features stop starting. Anything already running, such as a database or a shared site, keeps going until you stop it or Short Leash restarts.
• Nothing is deleted: services keep their data, and everything is back as it was when you buy or renew.
• Your data stays reachable. Back up now in Backups, and leash backup, start a database just long enough to export it, then stop it again.
• The free core keeps working.

Teams

Short Leash Pro for Teams is one subscription for 3 people or more. Each person gets their own key, for their own 2 computers. Add and remove people in Manage license; removing someone ends their key.

From a terminal

leash license status               # Pro or free, and until when
leash license activate LEASH-…    # this computer
leash license deactivate           # free this computer
leash license refresh              # check with Polar now

leash license status --json prints the same as JSON. See the CLI reference.

Testing purchases

A development build of Short Leash (just dev), or one built with LEASH_LICENSE_SANDBOX_BUILD=1, uses Polar's sandbox when it runs with LEASH_LICENSE_SANDBOX=1, so you can buy with Polar's test card. Released builds ignore it. Settings › License shows Sandbox while it's on.