Documentation · How-to guides

Air-gapped installation

Install and license Daxlate on a machine with no internet access.

Daxlate’s license verification runs fully offline. The app checks the cryptographic signature on your license against an embedded public key, with no network calls during normal use. That makes Daxlate suitable for machines that are permanently disconnected from the internet, including regulated environments, classified networks, and secure analytics environments.

The standard activation flow needs the internet for one step: contacting our license server once to fetch your signed license blob. For air-gapped machines, you can skip that step by installing the license file manually.

Prerequisites #

Before you start, on a machine with internet access:

Buy a Daxlate subscription at daxlate.com. You will receive a license email within a few seconds of checkout.
Open the email. You will see a license string that looks like this (it is long, usually one or two hundred characters):
```
daxlate-license:v2:eyJlbWFpbCI6...AbCdEf==.MEUCIQD...XYZ=
```
Copy this string. You will need it on the air-gapped machine.
Download the Daxlate MSI installer from /download.

Now transfer the MSI installer and the license string to the air-gapped machine using whatever method your environment permits: USB, an approved file-transfer service, or signed media.

Install Daxlate #

On the air-gapped machine, double-click Daxlate.msi and follow the installer prompts. See Install & activate for notes on the Windows SmartScreen prompt until an EV-signed build ships.

After install, launch Daxlate once and close it. This lets the app create its per-user folder at:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Daxlate\

which on most systems expands to:

C:\Users\<your-username>\AppData\Local\Daxlate\

You can leave the trial running on the license gate. You will replace it with your real license in the next step.

Create the license file #

In File Explorer, paste %LOCALAPPDATA%\Daxlate into the address bar and press Enter. You should see a folder containing settings.json, and possibly recent-files.json and a logs folder.

Create a new file in this folder called license.json with the following content, replacing <paste-license-string-here> with the license string from your email:

{
  "blob": "<paste-license-string-here>"
}

The full file should look like this:

{
  "blob": "daxlate-license:v2:eyJlbWFpbCI6...AbCdEf==.MEUCIQD...XYZ="
}

A few things that trip people up

The file must be named license.json exactly, not license.json.txt. If you create it in Notepad, use File → Save As, set Save as type to All Files, and put the name in quotes: “license.json”.
Save it as UTF-8 (the default in modern Notepad). UTF-16 or BOM-prefixed files will not parse.
The license string must be on one line, with no line breaks inserted by your email client. If your client wrapped the string when you copied it, paste it into Notepad first and remove the line breaks before wrapping it in JSON.
The string should start with daxlate-license:v2:, or daxlate-license:v1: for older licenses.

Verify #

Launch Daxlate. If everything is in order:

The license gate disappears and you go straight to the Welcome screen.
The “Trial · N days left” badge in the menu bar is gone.
Help → About shows your subscription email, plan, and renewal date.

If you still see the license gate:

Open %LOCALAPPDATA%\Daxlate\license.json and check the file is valid JSON. The blob is wrapped in double quotes, no trailing comma, no line breaks inside the blob.
Check the file extension is .json. Windows hides extensions by default. View → Show → File name extensions in File Explorer reveals them.
Check the blob is not expired. Licenses are valid until the end of your current billing period plus a seven-day grace window.

Renewals #

Each time your subscription renews, our server re-signs your license with a fresh expiry date and emails you a new blob. Air-gapped installs do not receive these renewals automatically.

When you receive a renewal email on your connected machine:

Copy the new license string from the email.
Transfer it to the air-gapped machine.
Replace the contents of %LOCALAPPDATA%\Daxlate\license.json with the new blob, keeping the same JSON wrapper around it.
Restart Daxlate.

Daxlate will keep working for up to seven days past the previous blob’s expiry date, so you have a comfortable window to swap the file before access cuts off.

We recommend setting a calendar reminder for a few days before your renewal date.

Removing a license #

To remove a license from an air-gapped machine, delete %LOCALAPPDATA%\Daxlate\license.json. Daxlate will fall back to the trial state, or to the license gate if the trial is exhausted, on the next launch.

You do not need to deactivate through our server because the device was never registered there in the first place.

Limitations #

No in-app update notifications. The startup update check is also a network call. On an air-gapped machine you will need to track Daxlate releases manually at /changelog and transfer new MSI versions over when they ship.

Need help? #

If your air-gapped environment has unusual constraints, such as segmented networks where one-time activation might still be possible, bulk device licensing, or longer renewal windows, email contact@daxlate.com before you set up. We can usually accommodate.