One payment. Every Mac you own. No small print.

The short version

Who you are dealing with

Shelf is made and sold by Sochetra Nov, one person, not a company. When these terms say “I” or “me”, that is who they mean. When they say “you”, they mean the person who downloads, buys, or uses Shelf.

By downloading, installing, buying, or using Shelf, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, do not use Shelf.

Your license

When you buy Shelf you get a personal, non‑exclusive, non‑transferable license to install and use it. In plain words:

• Every Mac you own. One license covers all the Macs you personally own and use.
• The whole app. There is no higher tier and no feature held back.
• Every update. New versions are included. I do not charge again.
• Yours to keep. The license does not expire. There is no subscription and nothing to renew.

You do not own the software itself. I keep the copyright and every other right in Shelf, its name, and its icon. You own your license to use it.

Activation

Shelf needs a license key to run. You paste the key once and Shelf asks my license server to confirm it. After that Shelf works offline and checks back with the server about once a day to keep the license fresh.

A license can be active on up to 5 Macs at the same time. That is more than most people own. If you replace a Mac, open Settings on the old one and choose Deactivate, and the slot frees up. If the old Mac is gone, write to me and I will free it by hand.

I use the email and order number from your purchase only to find your license when you need help, a refund, or a lost key. The privacy page says everything Shelf does and does not do with your data.

Payment and refunds

Shelf costs $4.99 USD, paid once. Orders are processed by my online reseller, Paddle.com. Paddle.com is the merchant of record for all orders: it takes the payment, issues the receipt, handles tax, and processes refunds. I never see your card number. Your bank may add a currency conversion fee, and your country may add tax at checkout. Those are not mine and I cannot refund them separately.

If Shelf is not for you, tell me within 14 days of buying and I will refund you in full. No form and no reason needed. Send your order number or the email you bought with to any channel on the support page. When a purchase is refunded, its license key stops working.

After 14 days, refunds are at my discretion. Write to me anyway. I am not unreasonable.

Updates and support

Shelf checks for a newer version and offers to download it. Installing updates is your choice, but I only fix bugs in the current version.

Shelf runs on macOS 14 Sonoma or later. I try to support each new macOS release soon after it ships, but I cannot promise a date, and I may stop supporting very old versions of macOS.

Support is me, by hand, through the channels on the support page. I usually answer within a day. There is no guaranteed response time and no service‑level agreement, which is a promise about how fast a company must reply.

I may change or remove features in a future version, and I may stop developing Shelf one day. If that happens, the version you have keeps working, and the license server stays up so it can still activate.

What you agree not to do

Keep it fair. You agree not to:

• Share your license key with anyone else, publish it, or sell it.
• Resell Shelf, rent it out, or bundle it in something you sell.
• Work around the license check, or help anyone else do that.
• Reverse‑engineer, decompile, or copy Shelf to build a competing product. Reading it to learn how it works is fine; the code is on GitHub.
• Use Shelf for anything illegal.

Shelf itself does not do anything with your files. What you drag onto it, and where you drop it, is on you.

No warranty

I build Shelf with care and test it before I ship. Still, it is software, and software has bugs. Shelf is provided “as is” and “as available”, without any warranty, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non‑infringement.

I do not promise that Shelf will be free of errors, work with every app, or run without interruption. If it breaks something for you, tell me and I will do my best to fix it.

Some places do not let a seller exclude warranties. If you live in one, you keep whatever rights the law there gives you, and this section applies only as far as that law allows.

Limit of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, I am not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damage that comes from using Shelf or being unable to use it. That includes lost files, lost work, lost profit, or lost data, even if I was told it could happen.

In any case, my total liability to you is capped at the amount you paid for Shelf, which is $4.99.

Shelf keeps references to your files, not copies. It never moves or deletes the original. Please keep your own backups, as you should with any software.

Ending the deal

You can stop using Shelf whenever you like. Delete the app and it is gone. Your license stays valid if you ever want it back.

I can revoke a license if it was refunded, charged back, or used in a way these terms forbid, such as a shared or resold key. I will always tell you why.

The parts of these terms about ownership, no warranty, and limit of liability keep applying after the deal ends.

Changes to these terms

If I change these terms, the date at the top changes and this page shows the new version. A change will never take away something you already paid for, such as your license, your updates, or your Macs. If you keep using Shelf after a change, you accept the new terms.

If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still applies.

Contact

Questions about these terms go straight to the person who wrote the app. Open an issue on GitHub or Facebook, or head to the support page.