Table of Contents
Activating Fotostation for Mac using the Terminal utility
20. April 2026
Table of Contents
About the Fotoware license tool
When rolling out multiple Fotostation instances in a network environment, it can be beneficial to automate the activation of the license on each computer using a logon script. This can be done by creating a logon script that runs on every computer where Fotostation has been installed.
Fotostation includes an executable file that can be run in a logon script with additional parameters to activate and deactivate the software, repair an activation, and dump activation information into a text file.
This executable file is located in the Fotostation app bundle, which is stored in /Applications/Fotostation app/Contents/MacOS/fwlicensetool.
When scripting the Fotostation installation, the license tool can be run to perform a regular online activation of a volume product key.
The utility can also be used to troubleshoot activation problems. For more information, see Command line activation of Fotoware applications using fwlicensetool.
For more information about deploying Fotostation on Mac, see Deployment of Fotostation for Mac.
Usage
General syntax
1 |
./fwlicensetool [options] |
Offline activation
Offline activation is used when the computer on which the Fotoware software is installed does not have a working internet connection.
An offline activation consists of the following three steps:
- Generating an offline activation request file on the computer intended to run the software.
- Uploading the activation request file to Fotoware: Go to https://licenses.fotoware.com/offline-activation (requires a Fotoware Customer Portal account) to upload the file.
- Using the response file received in the previous step to activate the software on the computer.
The commands used to create the activation request file in step 2 above and the command to activate the offline response file in step 3 are described in the Options table in Command line activation of Fotoware applications using fwlicensetool.