Licence and activated devices

A licence covers a number of machines. Here is how a machine claims one of those places, how to take it back, and what happens the day a licence lapses.

How activation works

When you sign in during installation and pick a paid edition, the machine registers itself against your licence and receives credentials of its own. Those credentials belong to that computer: copying them to another machine gains nothing, because they are checked against the machine they were issued to.

From then on the machine can install and update the software your edition includes. Nothing else on the system changes.

How many machines

Each licence covers a set number of machines. Your account page shows the count, for example 6 / 10, and lists every machine that holds a place, with its name, its specifications and the date it was last seen.

Freeing a place

Replacing a computer, or reinstalling from scratch on different hardware, means the old machine keeps its place until you take it back.

Open your account page and find the machine in the device list.
Click Deactivate, and confirm with your password.
The place is free immediately and can be used by another machine.

Reinstalling on the same computer never consumes a second place, so there is nothing to free before doing that.

The machine you deactivate keeps working for a few minutes before it notices. That is normal and not a failure: the answer is briefly remembered so that every machine does not have to ask again on every update.

"Your licence has no available slots"

The installer shows this when every place on the licence is taken. The installation itself continues and the machine works, it simply starts as Community. To finish:

Free a place from your account page, as above.
On the new machine, open Settings, go to Cyclop Account and sign in again.

If every machine listed is one you still use, the licence needs more places rather than a place freed. Contact us and we will extend it.

When a licence lapses

An expired, cancelled or deactivated licence does not cut a machine off on the spot. There is a grace period of thirty days, during which the machine keeps working normally and warns you as the end approaches.

At the end of that period the machine returns to Community:

the software specific to your edition is removed;
everything Community includes stays, and keeps receiving updates, security fixes included;
your documents and settings are untouched.

Renewing and signing in again restores the edition, and the software comes back.

See what each edition includes