Activating and updating VueScan

VueScan is free to download and try from the download page. Until you’ve entered a license, scans are saved with a watermark — everything else works normally, so you can confirm your scanner is supported and the software does what you need before buying.

This chapter covers what happens after a purchase: entering your license, recovering it if you lose it, moving it to a new computer, and how VueScan handles updates.

Activating your license

After buying VueScan, you’ll receive an email from Hamrick Software with two pieces of information:

• a serial number (a long string of letters and digits), and
• a customer number (a shorter number).

To enter them, choose Help | About — on macOS it’s under the VueScan menu, on Windows and Linux under Help. Type your email address, serial number, and customer number into the three boxes exactly as they appear in the email, then close the dialog. The watermark goes away on the next scan.

VueScan saves the license per-user:

• macOS and Linux: ~/.vuescanrc
• Windows: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VueScan\license

If you launch VueScan as an Administrator on Windows or with sudo on macOS/Linux, the license is also written to a system-wide location so every user on the machine can scan without re-entering it. See Help | About for the exact paths.

If you’ve lost your license

If you no longer have the original purchase email, you can look up your license using your email address and ZIP code at hamrick.com/rep.html. This is also where you go to manage or cancel an Update Program subscription.

If VueScan is still installed and running on the original machine but you can’t find the email, the credentials are stored locally in the files above and can be read out directly. See Where can I find my Serial/Customer Number from a VueScan Installation? for the per-OS instructions.

Moving to a new computer

A VueScan license is for personal use on every computer in your household — Windows, macOS, and Linux all count, in any combination. To set up VueScan on a new computer, download it from the download page, install it, and enter the same email address, serial number, and customer number in Help | About. There’s no transfer step and no limit to track.

Updates

By default, VueScan checks for new versions when it launches and shows a prompt when one is available. Click through the prompt and VueScan will download and install the update; your settings and license carry over.

• Check manually. Help | Update downloads the latest version on demand. The download page also always has the current installer.

• Disable the prompt. In managed deployments — or if you’d rather decide when to update — create an empty file named vuescan_no_update.ini next to VueScan’s .ini file:

  • Windows: Pictures\VueScan\vuescan_no_update.ini
  • macOS: ~/Pictures/VueScan/vuescan_no_update.ini
  • Linux: ~/.vuescan/vuescan_no_update.ini

  VueScan 9.8.14.04 or later is required for this file to be recognized. See How to disable update prompts for the longer version.

If your Update Program subscription has lapsed, VueScan keeps working at the last version released during your subscription year — it just stops offering you newer ones. Renewing at hamrick.com/rep.html re-enables updates.

Uninstalling

• Windows: open Settings → Apps & Features (or Programs and Features in the old Control Panel) and uninstall VueScan.
• macOS: Help | Uninstall removes VueScan’s settings folder. Then drag the VueScan app from /Applications to the Trash.
• Linux: remove the package with your distribution’s tool (apt remove vuescan, rpm -e vuescan), or just delete the extracted folder if you installed from the tarball.

Uninstalling doesn’t delete your saved license — it stays in ~/.vuescanrc or the Windows registry. If you reinstall later, your license is picked up automatically.