The awkward questions first
Warnings, limits and the things that will annoy you, at the top rather than buried at the bottom.
No, and we would rather you heard it here than found out on your own. Format is not code-signed yet, so SmartScreen shows that warning on the first run and some antivirus tools flag it. Choose More info, then Run anyway. Signing costs about ten dollars a month and is on the list.
Two things. Your key and your PC ID go to our own licence server — that is what locks the key to your machine, and there is no third-party licensing company in the path. Separately, one message goes to a private Discord channel: whether activation was accepted or refused, the tier and renewal date, your PC ID, a masked key, your IP address, your Windows user name and PC name, the version of Format and the time. It exists to catch one key being used by twenty people. Neither happens during the trial. The privacy notice lists all of it line by line.
None. No analytics, no telemetry, no account inside the app. Besides the licence check, Format only talks to GitHub to check for updates and, if you leave the setting on, to Steam for game cover art. Turning that setting off stops it completely.
Format drops to the Free tier and tells you with a banner. Nothing is uninstalled and nothing is undone. Your history stays intact and you can still revert anything you applied, including tweaks from a tier you no longer pay for.
Not until we clear the lock. Your key binds to a PC ID derived from your motherboard and CPU, so a new board looks like a different machine. Ask in Discord and we will reset it in a minute — you keep the same key. Reinstalling Windows changes nothing and your key keeps working.
No. A key cannot be recalled once it has been issued, so all payments are final — that includes a change of mind and a PC that did not get faster. This is why the Free tier has no timer: run it on the same machine, see how Format behaves, then decide.
Open History and press Revert. Format wrote down the previous value and its type before it changed anything, so the session goes back exactly as it was, months later, even if the tweak itself has changed since. It can also take a Windows restore point before a batch, and does by default.
Never. Those are off limits at every tier. There are no RAM cleaners, no pagefile disabling and no mass service killing either — they do not work, and pretending otherwise is how most of this category operates.
Not to look around. Detection, the games library and History all work as a normal user. Format asks for administrator at the moment you apply or revert, and not before.
So the key you paid for is waiting somewhere you can find it. Signing in reads your Discord username, avatar and id, nothing else; when you ask for a key we store that request — your Discord id and name, the PC ID you gave, the tier, and later the key itself — and nothing more. You can revoke the sign-in from Discord at any time. Format the desktop app has no account and never asks you to sign in.
Still stuck?
Support runs through Discord. Bring the PC ID shown in Settings — both are safe to share, and neither can be used to identify your machine to anyone else.