Activation

Fregata needs an active license — paid or trial — to record from cameras and run detection. Activation itself happens once per Mac and takes a few seconds seconds. After that, the app makes two recurring background calls to our servers — a license heartbeat every ~6 hours and a daily update check — both small, both documented in detail at Privacy & telemetry.

Paid license ($10 / year)

If you’ve purchased a license, you’ll have an email from [email protected] containing a key in the form frgt_XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX.

1. Launch Fregata. The activation window appears.
2. Paste the email address you used at checkout.
3. Paste the license key from the email.
4. Click Activate.

Fregata talks to the licensing service, binds the license to this Mac (via a privacy protecting one-way hash of the hardware UUID), and opens the main app.

What “valid until <date>” means

Your license is valid for every version of Fregata released before the expiry date. Those versions keep running forever with the same key, even after the license date passes. You only need to renew if you want to update to a release published after your license expires.

In other words: nothing breaks the day your license expires. Your recordings stay accessible, detection keeps running, your cameras keep working.

30-day trial

If you don’t have a key, click Start a 30-day trial in the activation window. You’ll be asked for an email; we mail the trial key to that address.

When you click Continue in the activation window, the next screen has your email pre-filled and a license-key field waiting. Open the email, copy the key, paste it back, click Activate.

Trial keys have the same shape as paid keys (frgt_…) and unlock the same feature set. Throughout the trial, the menu-bar tray surfaces a one-click Convert to Paid License option that turns the trial into a paid license — same key, no reinstall, the expiry just bumps forward a year.

Two days before the trial ends, we email a heads-up with a one-click convert link in case you’ve forgotten the date so Frigate does not stop unexpectedly.

After the trial expires

A trial expiring is not like a paid license expiring. Paid licenses keep working past their date — but a trial that’s run its course stops Frigate: recording and detection halt cleanly until you buy or quit.

When the trial license expires, Fregata shuts down Frigate and presents a modal explaining the trial has expired and that buying converts the key in place. Four buttons:

1. Buy for $10… — opens fregata.app/convert in the browser with your trial key pre-filled. After checkout completes, the trial flips to a paid license server-side.
2. I’ve paid — check now — re-runs activation against the licensing service. If the server now reports a runnable state, Frigate restarts immediately. Same key, no reinstall.
3. Enter a different license key… — for the rare case where you’ve bought a separate paid key. Opens the standard activation window.
4. Quit Fregata — terminates the app.

Moving Fregata to a different Mac

A license is bound to one Mac at a time. To move it:

1. On the new Mac, sign in to the license-management page with the email on the license.
2. Find the license card and click Release from this Mac.
3. Install Fregata on the new Mac and activate with the same email and key.

You can release a license up to 3 times in any 30-day window. Beyond that, reply to your license email and we’ll bump it for you.

See Moving & uninstalling for the full walkthrough including data migration.

Running offline

Fregata is designed to keep working on a Mac with no internet, but with two distinct behaviors worth knowing about.

While the app is running

Indefinite. Once Fregata has started up with a paid license, it keeps running offline as long as the app stays up. Recording and detection continue uninterrupted.

When you restart the app

7 days. On startup, Fregata verifies the cached license. If the license was successfully validated less than 7 days ago, Fregata starts as normal.

Beyond 7 days, the license is rejected at startup and the activation window appears. Connecting to the internet, re-entering the same email and key reactivates the same license as soon as you’re online again — no new purchase required.

In practice you’ll never hit the 7-day limit unless you’ve genuinely been offline for over a week and chosen to restart the app or the Mac during that stretch.

What gets sent during activation

The activation request includes:

• The license key and email you typed
• The Mac’s app version (so we can check it’s covered by your license’s update window)
• A hashed machine identifier — sha256(IOPlatformUUID) — used only to bind the license to this Mac. The original UUID never leaves the machine.

Heartbeats after activation are smaller: just the rotating token, the app version, and (unless you’ve opted out) a single block of technical telemetry. The full list is on Privacy & telemetry.