Install, activation, common DAW hiccups, and refund policy — across every Shades Of Toast plugin.
Download the installer from the link in your purchase email, run it, and it places the AU and VST3 in the standard system plugin folders. If it doesn't show up right away in your DAW, rescan your plugin folders — see Common DAW Gotchas below.
Activation is one-time, offline, and hardware-locked — no ongoing phone-home. On first load, Warp Delay shows an Activate dialog with your machine's hardware ID. Go to shadesoftoast.com/activate, enter the email you purchased with plus that hardware ID, and you'll get a license code back to paste into the dialog.
Opened multiple instances and only one shows as activated? Activation doesn't yet propagate live to instances that were already loaded before you activated — reopen your project, or remove and reinsert the plugin, and it'll pick up the activated state.
Activation dialog looks stuck, or won't take your code? If writing the license file fails (usually a permissions issue), the dialog can get stuck. Close the plugin — or your DAW — and reopen it, then try again.
Rescan your plugin folders. Ableton Live: Preferences > Plug-ins > rescan. Reaper: Options > Preferences > Plug-ins > VST > Re-scan. Logic Pro: relaunch — Logic re-validates AUs automatically — or open AU Manager and reset/rescan.
Either — same code, same sound. Logic and GarageBand require AU; most other hosts (Ableton, Reaper, Cubase, Studio One, FL Studio, Bitwig) take VST3.
Refunds are available within 14 days of purchase, as long as the license hasn't been used in a way that amounts to abuse — used on released or commercial work, or repeated buy-and-refund cycles. Non-refundable payment-processing fees are deducted from the refund amount. Request one through the refund link in your Polar purchase receipt.