Your AppRelay account & the Studio dashboard
The optional account at studio.apprelay.io: manage your license keys, move a seat between computers, buy or claim more licenses, download receipts, open and track support tickets, and change your sign-in details — without the app ever needing a login.
Last updated 2026-07-25
An AppRelay account at studio.apprelay.io is where you manage everything about your purchase from a browser: your license keys, which computer holds each seat, your receipts, and your sign-in details. It's the companion to the app — not a requirement for it.
Creating an account
- Register. Go to studio.apprelay.io/register and enter your email and a password. A display name is optional — you can add or change it later.
- Verify your email. We send a “Verify your AppRelay account” email with a link that's good for 24 hours. Click it.
- Sign in. Once verified, your account is ready and any licenses bought with that email are linked automatically.
Password requirements
Your password must be at least 10 characters (up to 200). That's the whole rule — we don't demand a symbol, a digit, or a capital letter, because length beats character-class gymnastics. A passphrase of a few unrelated words is an excellent choice. Passwords are stored as an Argon2id hash where the server supports it, and bcrypt otherwise; we never store the password itself and cannot read it.
What's on each page
- Dashboard
- Your licenses at a glance: how many you own, how many devices are active, and whether your edition is Studio or Free. Lists your first five licenses with their key, plan, updates-until date, and which machine holds each seat.
- Licenses
- Every license you own, each showing its plan, purchase date, updates-until date, active device, and a status pill. Also where you buy more licenses or claim one that isn't linked yet.
- Devices
- Every computer that has activated one of your keys, and the controls to move a seat between them. See Managing devices below.
- Receipts
- Your purchase history — date, plan, key, and amount — each linking to the Stripe-hosted receipt. Need a VAT invoice or a correction? Email hello@apprelay.io.
- Support
- Open a support ticket and follow the whole conversation in one place — threaded replies, file attachments, and a status timeline. See Support tickets below.
- Profile
- Your display name, when you joined, your last sign-in, and the forms to change your email or password.
Support tickets
Signed in, you get a full support portal rather than a fire-and-forget form. Open a ticket from the dashboard, and each one keeps the entire thread together:
- Threaded replies
- Your messages and ours in one conversation, newest activity shown on a single timeline — no digging through email to find the last reply.
- Attachments
- Add a screenshot or a log file to a ticket or a reply, so we can see what you're seeing.
- Status at a glance
- A pill tracks the ticket through open → pending → resolved → closed, so you always know whose court the ball is in.
- Rate the resolution
- Once a ticket is resolved, a quick 👍 / 👎 (with an optional comment) tells us how we did.
What the status pill means
Every license carries a coloured pill. Almost always it reads Active and there's nothing to think about:
| Pill | What it means |
|---|---|
| Active | Normal. The license works and can hold a seat. |
| On hold | A nightly audit couldn't match the license to its original payment, so it's paused on your devices while we check. This is usually a bookkeeping mismatch on our side rather than anything you did, and it needs nothing from you. If you bought the key and weren't refunded, don't re-buy — open a ticket and we'll restore it in one step. |
| Revoked | The license has been switched off and can't activate a device. |
| Refunded | The payment was refunded, so the license is no longer active. |
The buttons on a license appear only when they apply, so don't be surprised by a short row:
| Button | Shows when |
|---|---|
| Renew updates | The license is active. One that's on hold, revoked, or refunded can't be renewed. |
| Release seat | Always — but greyed out when no computer currently holds the seat. |
| Manage devices | Always. |
| View receipt | There's a payment on file. A license we granted or gifted has no receipt, and says so. |
How licenses attach to your account
There are three ways a license ends up on your account, and you don't have to think about most of them:
- Automatically, when you verify
- At the moment you click your verification link, every license already bought with that same address is linked to you. This is the usual path — buy first, register later, and your keys are simply there. Note it happens once, at verification: a license you buy afterwards while signed out won't attach on its own, even with the same email. Claim it (below) — or just buy while signed in.
- Automatically, when you buy signed in
- A purchase started from your account is tied to it as part of checkout, so it attaches on payment without you doing anything.
- Manually, by claiming
- On the Licenses page, Claim a license takes a license key plus the email it was purchased with. This is the answer whenever a key isn't showing up — including one you bought under an address you can't register with. A claimed license is marked claimed in your list.
Managing devices
A Studio license is one seat: it runs on one computer at a time, and you can move it whenever you like. The Devices page shows every machine that has ever activated the key, each with its name, platform, app version, when it was last seen, and whether it currently holds the active seat. A machine we've only ever seen hold a seat — never registered itself — shows the generic label Computer until AppRelay runs on it again.
Each row offers one of three things:
- Deactivate
- Shown on the machine that currently holds the seat. It frees the seat, and that computer drops to the free tier until you activate it again.
- Activate here
- Shown on a machine that has run AppRelay before but doesn't hold the seat. Choosing it moves the license to that computer and releases whichever one held it.
- “Open AppRelay on it once to activate”
- Shown instead of a button when we've seen the seat but not the machine itself. Launch AppRelay there once and the row becomes actionable.
The Release seat button on the Licenses page is the blunter version: it frees every seat on that key at once, without needing to pick a machine. It's the right tool when the old computer was wiped, sold, or died.
How the app finds out
You don't have to touch the app. AppRelay re-checks its license with us periodically while you're online, and when you bring the window to the front. When a check-in finds the seat has moved, the app tells you it isn't the active seat for this license and falls back to the free tier. Nothing local is touched — your projects, secrets, and history stay exactly as they were, and activating again restores Studio immediately.
Buying more licenses
Licenses are per-seat, so a second machine that needs to run Studio at the same time needs a second license. On the Licenses page, Buy another license takes a quantity from 1 to 10 and sends you to Stripe.
Every purchase mints a new key. Buying a second time doesn't top up or extend your first license — you get an additional, independent one. If what you actually want is more updates on a key you already own, use Renew updates on that license instead (see below).
Renewing your updates window
A Studio license is perpetual and includes 1 year of updates. When that window closes, the app keeps working forever — you just stop receiving newer builds. Renew updates on the Licenses page extends the window on that same key with another one-time payment; it's not a subscription and it doesn't auto-charge. See Pricing & licensing for the full model.
Changing your email or password
- Display name
- Change it on Profile at any time; it's only ever used to greet you. Up to 120 characters.
- Requires your current password. Submitting only requests the change: we email a confirmation link to the new address, and your account moves there when you use it. See below.
- Password
- Requires your current password plus the new one twice.
- Forgot your password
- Request a reset link. It's valid for 1 hour. Completing a reset also verifies your email, since it proves you control the mailbox.
How an email change works
Nothing happens to your account when you submit the form. The address you typed is held as a pending request and sent a confirmation link; your account only moves when that link is used. Until then — and if the link expires unused after 24 hours — you carry on with your current address exactly as before.
While a request is pending, the Email section of your Profile shows what it's waiting on, with Resend and Cancel next to it. Submitting a different address simply replaces the pending one. We also email your current address whenever a change is requested, so nobody can quietly move your account without you hearing about it.
Once you confirm, the new address is your sign-in address and is already verified — clicking the link proved you can read it. Your password is unchanged, your licenses stay put, and any license bought under the new address gets linked to you at that moment. Very occasionally a confirmation fails because someone else registered that address during the 24 hours it was pending; if so, your account keeps its current address and you can try another.
About those emailed links
Verification, confirmation, and reset links are single-use, and requesting a new one immediately invalidates the previous one. If you press Resend and then click the link in the older email, it won't work — always use the most recent one. They're stored only as a one-way hash, so nobody at our end can read your link.
Staying signed in
A session lasts 14 days of inactivity and every visit extends it — but the cookie itself is a browser-session cookie, so quitting your browser normally signs you out regardless. If a form ever tells you your session expired or was stale, reload the page and try again; it's a safety check, not a lost account.
Signing in too many times in a short window will temporarily rate-limit you (“Too many attempts…”) — the counter includes successful sign-ins, so this can happen on a shared or office network without anything being wrong. Wait a few minutes.
If you'd rather not have an account
You never have to register. The Manage license page looks a license up with just your key and purchase email — no account, no password — and can:
- Resend your key by email, if you've lost it. This is the one thing the account dashboard can't do, so it's the right page when the key itself is what's missing.
- Release the seat, to move to a different computer.
- Renew your updates window.
What you give up without an account: per-device control, receipts, buying multiple keys, and seeing all your licenses in one place.
What we store
An account holds your email, a hash of your password (never the password), an optional display name, whether your email is verified, when and from what IP address you last signed in, and which licenses are yours. We also keep a security log of account events — sign-ins and failed sign-ins, password and email changes, claiming a license, moving a seat — each with a time and an IP, so a compromised account can be investigated.
It carries nothing about your projects, code, or secrets — AppRelay never uploads those, with or without an account. Account pages are excluded from search engines and aren't part of our website analytics. You can ask us to delete your account at any time; your licenses keep working if you do. The Privacy Policy spells all of this out, and Security & privacy covers what a licensing check-in sends.
Next steps
- Pricing, licensing & the free tier — the tiers, buying, and activating
- Security & privacy — what leaves your machine
- Go to your account