reference glossary licensing
The macOS Licensing Glossary: 25 Terms for Mac Developers
A reference glossary for Mac developers — license keys, activations, leases, refund flows, signing, and SDK runtime terms, each linked to deeper reading.
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Licensing, distribution, and shipping Apple apps outside the App Store.
analytics licensing metrics
The 9 Licensing Metrics Every App Business Should Track
Your Stripe dashboard shows revenue. It says nothing about whether licenses activate, validate, or quietly fail. Here are the nine licensing metrics worth watching.
swift macos sdk
License Verification at App Launch: A Swift Walkthrough
How checkOnLaunch() resolves the license on a SwiftUI Mac app and the six states your UI needs to handle: trial, licensed, limited, freeTier, expired, and invalid.
pricing trials free-tier
Free Tier, Trial, or Paid: Designing Mac App Licensing Tiers
How to choose between a keyless free tier, a time-bound trial, and paid tiers for a Mac app — and the Keylight configuration that maps to each.
audio-plugins juce cpp license-keys offline
Offline Licensing for Your VST/AU Plugin Without a Backend
Add offline licensing to a JUCE plugin with Keylight — activate from the editor, gate pro features in processBlock via a lock-free atomic, no backend.
support customer-portal licensing
Reducing License Activation Support Tickets for Indie Mac Devs
Three activation tickets indie Mac devs answer on repeat and how the Keylight portal handles each without your involvement — plus the canned redirect email template.
unreal-engine cpp license-keys offline
License Your Unreal Engine Game Offline in an Afternoon
Add offline licensing to an Unreal Engine game with the Keylight C++ plugin — drop it into Plugins/, configure UKeylightSubsystem, and activate from Blueprints or C++.
electron javascript license-keys
How to Add License Keys to an Electron App
A step-by-step guide to licensing an Electron app with Keylight — run the SDK in the main process, bridge activation over IPC, and gate features by entitlement.
tauri rust license-keys
How to Add License Keys to a Tauri App
How to add license keys to a Tauri v2 app with the Keylight plugin — register it in Rust, grant its capability, and call activate and validate from your frontend.
cross-platform architecture license-keys
Licensing a Cross-Platform App from One Control Plane
How to license a cross-platform app from one Keylight tenant — the same signed-lease format and Ed25519 verification across the Swift, JavaScript, Rust, and Tauri SDKs.
migration gumroad stripe
Moving Your App's Licensing Off Gumroad
How to move your app licensing off Gumroad to Stripe and Keylight without breaking existing keys — import your customers, switch new sales, and bootstrap devices.
rust offline license-keys
Offline License Validation in Rust
How offline license validation works in Rust with the keylight crate — verify an Ed25519-signed lease locally with no network call, bounded by an offline grace window.
pricing subscriptions licensing
One-Time vs Subscription Licensing: Which to Use?
One-time vs subscription licensing for your app — how each affects revenue, support, and trust, and how Keylight models perpetual keys and renewing subscriptions.
subscriptions billing licensing
Subscription Licensing for Mac Apps: Renewals, Upgrades, Downgrades
How Keylight models a Mac app subscription — the lease, the Stripe subscription, the renewal boundary, and the upgrade or downgrade path between tiers.
tauri electron license-keys
Tauri vs Electron for Licensed Desktop Apps
Tauri vs Electron for a desktop app you plan to sell — the real differences in core language and bundle size, and where license verification should live in each.
ed25519 cryptography license-keys
What Is Inside a Keylight Lease: The Ed25519 Format Explained
A Keylight lease is a signed JSON document, not an opaque license string. Here is the field-by-field anatomy and how Ed25519 verification protects every field.
licensing macos swift stripe
How to Add Licensing to a Mac App
The fastest way to add licensing to a Mac app: a payment provider for money, Keylight for licensing, a Swift SDK you drop in. The alternatives too.
stripe webhooks licensing
How Stripe + Keylight Issues a License: The Webhook Pipeline
Inside the pipeline that turns a Stripe Checkout payment into a signed license key in seconds — what fires, what gets minted, and what idempotency you get for free.
Migration Licensing
How to Import an Existing Customer Base into Keylight
Import an existing customer base into Keylight from a CSV — preserve the keys customers already have, skip duplicates, and avoid forcing anyone to repurchase.
Migration Licensing
Migrate License Keys Without Breaking Existing Customers
Switching your licensing shouldn't break a single customer. Here's how to migrate license keys into Keylight while every existing key keeps working.
vision roadmap licensing
The future of Keylight: one licensing layer for every stack
Keylight is Swift-first and now cross-platform — Swift, Rust, and JavaScript SDKs today. Where it's headed: a public REST API and one dashboard for every license.
macos keychain sparkle
Persisting Mac App Licenses Across Auto-Updates
Why Keychain-stored licenses survive when a .app bundle is replaced by Sparkle or any auto-updater — and the three-step test to verify your update path before shipping.
macos sandbox keychain
Does Keylight Work in Sandboxed Mac Apps?
How Keylight handles macOS App Sandbox: Keychain access, required entitlements, and the edge case of accepting direct license keys in a Mac App Store build.
macos distribution licensing launch
How to Launch a Mac App Outside the App Store
A step-by-step playbook for launching a Mac app outside the App Store — signing, payments, licensing, updates, support, and launch day.
macos device-activations license-keys
How Device Activation Limits Work for Indie Mac Apps
How indie Mac apps can use device activation limits to reduce license sharing without punishing customers who own a laptop and desktop.
macos keychain license-keys
How to Store a Signed License Token in the macOS Keychain
A practical guide to storing a signed license token in the macOS Keychain, what belongs in Application Support, and how offline validation uses it.
macos stripe paddle lemon-squeezy
Paddle vs Lemon Squeezy vs Stripe for Mac App Licensing
How Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, and Stripe fit into Mac app licensing, where checkout ends, and why license keys still need a dedicated layer.
macos developer-id license-keys
Developer ID vs License Keys for Mac Apps
Developer ID and license keys solve different Mac app problems: safe installation, paid access, device activations, offline validation, and refunds.
stripe macos license-keys
Stripe Webhooks for macOS License Keys
How Stripe webhooks turn a Mac app purchase into a license key: checkout completion, idempotent key creation, subscriptions, refunds, and Keylight.
swift macos license-keys
How to Add License Keys to a Swift macOS App
A step-by-step guide to adding license keys to a Swift macOS app — trial, activation, entitlement checks, and the UI states, using the KeylightSDK.
pricing macos indie
The Indie Mac Developer's Guide to Pricing in 2026
How to price an indie Mac app in 2026 — one-time vs subscription, tiered pricing, lifetime deals, and structuring pricing that scales with your audience.
licensing scaling architecture
Why Software Licensing Gets Hard When Apps Scale
The simple license check you wrote at launch quietly becomes a liability as an app grows. Here is where licensing breaks at scale, and how to design around it.
licensing architecture offline
What Happens When Your Licensing Server Goes Down
If your licensing server goes down, can your customers still open their apps? How to design licensing so an outage never becomes a customer-facing failure.
pricing macos trials
Building a Paywall That Doesn't Suck
Paywall design patterns for developer tools and Mac apps — placement, messaging, tier presentation, and reducing friction so the purchase feels fair, not hostile.
macos swift security
Where to Store License Data on macOS
Keychain, UserDefaults, or a file: where should a Mac app store license data? A look at the options, their security tradeoffs, and a sensible default.
macos trials pricing
From Trial to Paid: Conversion for Mac Apps
How to convert free-trial users into paying customers for a Mac app — trial length, reminder timing, in-app prompts, and the licensing that makes it all work.
keylight licensing paddle
Why I Built My Own Licensing SDK Instead of Using Paddle
A founder note on why Keylight exists — the licensing gaps in Paddle, Gumroad, and Lemon Squeezy that pushed me to build a dedicated layer on top of Stripe.
pricing paddle licensing
The Hidden Cost of 'Free' Licensing
Merchant-of-record platforms bundle licensing into a revenue share that looks small. Here is the real math, and the lock-in cost that never shows on the invoice.
ai licensing architecture
Building a Modern Licensing System for AI Apps
How to license AI apps the right way — separating the app license from metered AI usage, signed keys for on-device models, and seat-based licensing for teams.
paddle stripe distribution
Migrating from Paddle to Stripe
A practical guide to migrating from Paddle to Stripe — what changes, how to handle tax and licensing, and how to move customers without breaking their apps.
licensing license-keys macos
How Device Activations Work
How device activations work in software licensing — fingerprinting, activation limits, the activate and deactivate flow, and idempotency that keeps it fair.
licensing stripe license-keys
What Happens After a Refund in Licensed Software
What should happen to a license key after a refund or chargeback — automatic revocation, how it reaches the app, and why offline apps revoke on a delay.
license-keys licensing security
How to Prevent License Key Sharing
How to prevent license key sharing without punishing legitimate customers — device activation limits, fingerprinting, and choosing graceful limits over hard blocks.
offline licensing macos
How Offline License Validation Works
A plain-English explanation of how offline license validation works — verifying a signed license locally with a public key, and why desktop apps need it.
license-keys licensing security
How License Keys Work for Desktop Apps
A clear explanation of how modern license keys work for desktop apps — from old checksum keys to cryptographically signed leases your app can verify offline.
Migration Licensing
Migrating Your App's Licensing to Keylight
Why and how to migrate your app's licensing to Keylight — from a merchant-of-record service or a homegrown system — and the tradeoffs to weigh before you switch.
macos distribution licensing
How to Sell a Mac App Outside the App Store
A practical walk-through of selling a Mac app directly — distribution, notarization, payments, and licensing — and an honest look at the tradeoffs against the App Store.
stripe paddle pricing
Stripe vs Paddle vs Lemon Squeezy for Indie Developers
A practical comparison of Stripe, Paddle, and Lemon Squeezy for indie app developers — fees, tax handling, customer ownership, licensing, and which to pick when.
keylight licensing
Welcome to the Keylight blog
A short introduction to what the Keylight blog is for — practical writing about licensing, distribution, and shipping desktop and AI-native apps.