License files for Airtable
December 4, 2018 at 10:03 AM by Dr. Drang
Shortly after my software license post went up, Jezper Söderlund tweeted me a very good question: How do you handle software that uses a license file instead of a license key? Turns out there’s a simple answer, and I needed it.
After exporting the licenses from 1Password and importing them into Airtable, I had noticed that the entry for Witch, the better-than-stock app switcher from Many Tricks, had no license key. Weird, I thought, but I didn’t follow up on it. When I saw Jezper’s tweet, I realized why.
Witch does, in fact, use a license file instead of a license key to authorize its use. The license file is buried in the Application Support subfolder of your Library folder. 1Password has a system for adding attachments to software license entries, and I had done that when I bought Witch. Unsurprisingly, the file attachment didn’t get exported to the CSV file. I was a little surprised, though, that the CSV didn’t have a field to indicate there was an attachment for that entry.
In any event, now that I knew I needed to handle file attachments, the solution was simple. I added a new field to my Airtable database and chose the Attachment field type.
With this field added to the database, it was easy to drag Witch’s license file into Airtable. When you click on an empty attachment field in Safari on the Mac, the field tells you it’s ready to have a file dragged and dropped onto it.
I scrolled through all the other software licenses in 1Password to see if any others had license files. They didn’t, but now I’m ready to handle any new apps that do.
