Frequently asked questions
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.
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.
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, which runs LLM refinement entirely on-device with no data leaving your Mac; and Obsidian & Markdown export, which lets you drop your study documents straight into a personal knowledge base. If neither of those matters to you, Standard is the right choice.
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 URL, download Whisper model weights (once, on your request), or use the optional Claude API consolidation.
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.
How many Macs can I use Harvestry on?
Each licence covers up to 2 Macs. Your library syncs automatically between them via iCloud, so your full collection of study documents, transcripts, and screenshots is available on both machines without any manual copying.
Can I try it before buying?
Yes. Harvestry includes a 7-day free trial — no account or credit card required. Download it, process a few of your own videos, and see the output before you spend anything. The trial is designed to be long enough to evaluate Harvestry with real content.
What is your refund policy?
All sales are final. Because Harvestry includes a full 7-day trial with no credit card required, we encourage you to try it thoroughly before purchasing. If you encounter a technical issue that prevents the app from working on your machine, contact us at
support@harvestry.co and we'll work to resolve it — and if we can't, we'll make it right.
The app seemed to freeze briefly while transcribing a long lecture — is that a bug?
Not exactly. Harvestry uses WhisperKit to transcribe audio entirely on your Mac using the Apple Neural Engine. For videos longer than about an hour, WhisperKit runs a large amount of parallel work in the background — and occasionally this causes a brief moment where the app appears unresponsive for a second or two before recovering on its own. Nothing is lost and the transcription continues normally; the app is simply catching up with a backlog of background processing. If you're processing a multi-hour lecture, leaving the app running in the background and checking back later is the most reliable approach. This behaviour is outside our control — it's a low-level interaction between Apple's Swift runtime and the transcription engine — and we're monitoring it with each release.
A YouTube download failed with a 403 error — what do I do?
There are two common causes. First, check whether you're connected to a VPN — YouTube frequently blocks download requests from VPN exit nodes, and disconnecting is usually all it takes. Second, if you're not on a VPN, the version of yt-dlp on your Mac may be 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.