When a trial or licence ends

When your trial ends or your licence stops being valid, Storage Studio pauses its own work — but it never touches your files. Everything you moved stays exactly where it is, and the shortcuts it left behind keep pointing at it. As soon as you activate, buy or fix a payment, Storage Studio picks up where it left off.

What you'll see

• The menu-bar popover shows Licence inactive, with a short reason, Activate licence and Pick a plan buttons, a list of what is Paused right now, and a short explanation under What does this mean?
• The popover header shows a badge such as LICENCE INACTIVE.
• Preferences opens on the License pane, which is the only pane shown until you're licensed again.
• At launch, Storage Studio shows a window explaining what happened and what you can do.

If the reason is a payment, you see Payment needed or Your subscription has ended instead, with the button that fixes it — see Payment needed.

What keeps working

• Your moved folders and apps. They stay on your external drive or cloud account, and the shortcuts at their original places keep working while the drive is connected. Apps you moved still open.
• Your data on both drives is left as it is. Nothing is deleted, moved back or tidied up because a licence ended.
• Help, the logs, Preferences, Legal documents, Share Your Experience, Uninstall and Quit stay available, so you can troubleshoot, contact support or leave.

What pauses

The popover lists what is paused:

Opening one of these features shows a message that it is unavailable while the licence is inactive, with a button to open the License settings. If you have My Drive, it is paused too, without anything in your storage being touched.

%% caption: Getting back from an inactive licence
flowchart TD
  A[Licence inactive] --> B{Why?}
  B -->|Trial ended| C[Extend, buy, or enter a key or code]
  B -->|Payment| D[Fix Payment or Subscribe again]
  B -->|New Mac or reinstall| E[Activate this Mac with your licence key]
  C --> F[Everything resumes on the next cycle]
  D --> F
  E --> F

How to get back

• Trial ended: extend it if that's offered, buy a licence, or enter a coupon or onboarding code.
• Payment: see Payment needed.
• New Mac or a fresh macOS install: activate with your licence key — see Using your licence on a new Mac.
• Something else: if you think it's wrong, email support with your purchase email and we'll look into it.

Once you're licensed again, scheduled runs and rules resume on their next cycle, with your settings as you left them.

See also: The License pane, The shortcut left behind after a move, When your drive is disconnected.