Frequently Asked Questions
Quick answers to the most common questions about Harvestry.
Licensing & Pricing
Does Harvestry require a subscription?
No. Harvestry is a one-time purchase. You pay once and receive all updates within that major version (v1.x) at no extra cost. Future major versions — when they arrive — will be offered as a new purchase, with a meaningful discount for existing customers.
Can I try it before buying?
Yes. Download the free trial and process your first videos to see how Harvestry works before committing. No account or credit card required.
What's the difference between Standard and Pro?
The core feature set is identical. Pro adds two things for users who want to go deeper:
- Local Ollama consolidation — runs LLM refinement entirely on-device with no data leaving your Mac.
- Obsidian & Markdown export — drop your study documents straight into a personal knowledge base.
If neither of those matters to you, Standard is the right choice. See Standard & Pro for a full comparison.
Compatibility
Which Macs are supported?
Any Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 15 or later. Harvestry uses the Apple Neural Engine for transcription, which requires an M-series chip. Intel Macs are not supported.
Does Harvestry work without an internet connection?
Yes, for local video files. Transcription, screenshot capture, and export all run entirely offline. An internet connection is only needed to:
- Download a video from a YouTube/Vimeo URL
- Download Whisper model weights (once, on your request)
- Use the optional Claude API consolidation
Do I need an Anthropic API key?
Only if you want to use the optional LLM consolidation feature with Claude. The core pipeline — transcription, screenshot capture, and HTML export — works entirely offline with no API key of any kind.
Troubleshooting
A YouTube download failed with a 403 error — what do I do?
There are two common causes:
- You're connected to a VPN. YouTube frequently blocks download requests from VPN exit nodes. Disconnect from your VPN and try the download again — this is the most common cause.
- yt-dlp is out of date. YouTube periodically changes how it handles requests, and older yt-dlp builds start getting blocked as a result. Open Settings → Video Downloader and click Check for Updates to pull the latest release automatically.
If the error persists after both steps, try the download once more — YouTube occasionally returns transient 403s that clear on a second attempt.