The Tide: apps added by hand, for the ones Floodtide can’t check on its own.

No. Nothing is taken away, now or later. Without the Tide you keep every app Floodtide updates today, all 2,003 hand-researched apps, new apps from their own update feeds, Homebrew, GitHub and the App Store, Update All, backups and undo, and every 1.x update.

Yes. Floodtide covers these on its own: every app that publishes its updates through its own Sparkle or Electron feed, a Homebrew cask, GitHub releases or the App Store, including apps that come out after today, because nobody has to add them. You can also point any app at a Sparkle address or a GitHub repository yourself. The Tide is only for apps with no source Floodtide can find on its own. What stopped growing when the Tide opened is my hand-researched catalogue: its 2,003 apps stay included with every licence and I keep them working, but apps I research now go into the Tide.

97 so far, and every one is listed on this page under “Every app in the Tide”, A to Z. New ones are the apps Floodtide users ask for most, as long as the developer publishes an official source. Ask for yours from inside Floodtide: select the app and choose Request Coverage. Subscribers’ requests are researched first.

No. The licence is still £10.99 once, and it is yours for good. Every update source, all 2,003 apps in the hand-researched catalogue and every 1.x update stay included with every licence. The Tide is optional and purely additional. Skip it and nothing changes.

Apps the Tide added go back to "not covered" on your Mac, and you can still update them from the developer’s site as you would anyway. Everything else keeps working exactly as before.

Because the work is weekly and never finishes: researching the hundreds of new apps people ask for each week, testing them, and checking every entry again each night. A one-off price is what MacUpdater tried, and its developer wrote that it could not pay for the upkeep. £9.99 a year is about 83p a month; half price, £4.99, is about 42p.

If you add the Tide now, £9.99 a year stays your price for as long as you stay subscribed. If you bought Floodtide before it opened, £4.99 stays yours the same way.

Version reports need Macs to say which apps and versions they run, and that is the coverage switch in Settings, Privacy. It sends app names, bundle identifiers, versions, each app’s build, how it updates, any update feed address or source repository the app names, whether macOS recorded that it was downloaded from the internet (yes or no, never the address) and whether Floodtide covers it, at most once a day, and never a name, account or device identifier. It is on in every copy of Floodtide from the release that opened the Tide, with a notice on first launch and a switch in Settings, Privacy to turn it off. You can use the Tide with it off. It is on whether or not you subscribe, and the separate anonymous usage line stays off unless you switch it on.

Versions marked beta, alpha, RC, nightly, preview or similar are thrown out. A version only shows once two different Macs report it on the same day, so one Mac cannot put a version in front of everyone. Reports are only used for apps with no official source, so they can never override a real update feed, and they never install anything.

From your account page: Manage billing opens Stripe’s portal, and the Tide runs to the end of the year already paid. Seven days before each renewal, and before the first charge after a free month, you get an email from us saying so. Within 30 days of any Tide charge you can also have it refunded in full: email raf@bhopstudio.com.

Yes. Within 30 days of any Tide charge, the first or a renewal, email raf@bhopstudio.com and I refund that charge in full. The refund ends the Tide, and your Floodtide licence stays yours. Bought the licence and the Tide together? They are two charges: the licence today, the Tide when your free month ends. Refunding the licence ends both; refunding a Tide charge ends only the Tide.

Yes. The 14-day trial includes the Tide, and every licence gets the Tide free for a month, with no card: from the day it is bought, or from the day the Tide opened for a licence bought before then. After that it is £9.99 a year, or half price (£4.99) for a licence bought before the Tide opened, for as long as you stay subscribed. The free time covers every Mac on your licence, with nothing to do. Any Tide charge after that can be refunded within 30 days.