End User License Agreement

License Grant

You buy a license to use FileRanger. You do not buy the software itself.

Subject to these terms, CTRL Colab LLC grants you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, worldwide license to install and use FileRanger on the computers described in section 3, for as long as you like. The license covers use for your own purposes, whether personal or at work — there is no separate "commercial" tier and no per-seat upsell for using it to do your job.

By installing or using FileRanger you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not install it — and if you have already paid, ask for a refund under the Refund Policy.

How Licensing Works

Your license is a serial number. It activates online once, and after that the checking happens on your own computer.

When you buy FileRanger we generate a serial number and email it to you. The first time you open FileRanger it asks for it, sends it to our activation server together with an anonymous machine identifier, and receives back a signed activation for that computer. From then on the checking happens locally, offline, every launch — FileRanger does not need the network to start, and does not ask again.

Roughly once a month, when it happens to be online at launch, FileRanger re-checks the serial with us in the background. The rule that check follows is deliberately one-sided, and the practical consequences are worth spelling out:

• Silence never locks you out. FileRanger works offline, with no offline time limit.
• It works if our website is down, and it will keep working if CTRL Colab one day stops trading — the failure mode of every check is "keep working".
• The only thing that ever deactivates a copy is a signed answer from us saying the serial was revoked, which happens when a purchase is refunded or charged back (see the Refund Policy).
• The check carries your serial, the anonymous machine identifier, and the app version — never your files, file names, or anything about how you use FileRanger.

Keep your serial somewhere you can find it again. If you lose it, email us from your purchase address and we will send it again. License files from purchases made before serial numbers keep working, permanently — the activation screen has a licence-file section for them.

Permitted Installations

Install it on the computers you personally use.

Your license covers 3 installations for one person. The activation server counts to three and no further: a fourth machine is refused with a note to contact us. Machines change — hardware dies, laptops get replaced — so if you hit the limit legitimately, email hello@ctrlcolab.com and we will free a seat.

What we mean by that: a desktop and a laptop that both belong to you is exactly the intent. Reinstalling after a rebuild, or moving to a new machine and retiring the old one, does not use up an installation and does not require anything from us. Handing your license file to your team, your department, or the internet is not the intent, and doing so is a breach of this agreement even though nothing will stop you.

If you need to cover a team, write to us. We would rather sell you what you need than have you feel awkward about it.

Versions Covered, and Upgrades

Your purchase covers FileRanger 1.x, including every point update we release in that line.

Because FileRanger is sold as a direct download rather than through an app store, updates come from us. When we ship 1.0.4, 1.1, or 1.4, your existing license file opens it and there is nothing to pay. Updates through the entire 1.x line are included in your purchase. A future 2.0 will be announced with its own upgrade terms at that time; existing 1.x purchases are honoured on the terms in effect at the time of purchase.

We make no promise about how often we will release updates, or that any particular feature will ever be built. What you are buying is the software as it exists today, plus whatever we choose to improve about it.

FileRanger runs on Windows 10 and Windows 11, 64-bit (x64). ARM64 devices are not officially supported in 1.0; running FileRanger on ARM64 through Windows emulation may work but is untested. If a future version of Windows breaks something, we will do our best to fix it, but we cannot guarantee that FileRanger will run on operating system versions released after your purchase.

System Access and Administrator Rights

FileRanger runs as you. It never asks for administrator rights.

FileRanger is an ordinary Windows desktop application. It runs unelevated — with your own account's permissions and no more — and it can read what you can read. It is not a system service, it does not install a driver, and it will never show you a Windows UAC elevation prompt.

All indexing, including indexing a whole drive, works the same way: FileRanger walks the locations you chose using the standard Windows file APIs, as you. A useful consequence is that FileRanger cannot see anything your own account cannot see. It also means that locations your account is not permitted to read are not indexed — which is one of the reasons results are not warranted complete, as the next section explains.

What FileRanger Is, and What It Is Not

FileRanger is a productivity tool. Its results are not warranted to be complete.

What FileRanger can find depends on which locations you have told it to index, which exclusions are active, what permissions your Windows account has, what kind of drive it is, and how Windows reports the contents of that drive. Files can be missed. Files can be stale between scans. This is normal for any index-based search tool and you should not treat a FileRanger result set as an exhaustive statement about what does or does not exist on a computer.

Specifically, and to be unambiguous about it:

• FileRanger is not a backup product. It indexes your files; it does not copy, protect, or restore them.
• FileRanger is not a forensic or eDiscovery tool. Do not rely on it for legal discovery, audit, compliance evidence, or any purpose where a missed file has consequences.
• FileRanger is not a security product. It does not scan for malware, and it does not protect anything.

Restrictions

You may not:

• Sell, rent, lease, sublicense, distribute, or otherwise make FileRanger available to anyone else as a product or service.
• Share, publish, or resell your license file, or remove or alter the email address embedded in it.
• Circumvent, disable, or attempt to defeat the licensing mechanism.
• Reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble FileRanger, except to the extent that applicable law expressly permits it despite this restriction.
• Remove or obscure any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary notice.
• Use FileRanger for anything unlawful.

Nothing in this section restricts your rights under the licenses of the third-party components listed in section 10, which govern those components on their own terms.

Ownership — and Your Data

The software is ours. Everything it looks at is yours.

FileRanger, its source code, its design, its artwork, and its name remain the property of CTRL Colab LLC and its licensors. This agreement licenses the software to you; it does not sell it, and all rights not expressly granted are reserved.

Your files are yours, and so is the index built from them. We claim no ownership of, license to, or interest in any file on your computer, any search you run, or any index FileRanger produces. We have no access to any of it — see section 9 and the Privacy Policy.

No Transmission, No Data Collection

FileRanger does not transmit your file names, your paths, or your file contents. Anywhere.

There is no account, no sign-in, no telemetry, and no analytics service. FileRanger makes exactly one kind of request to us: the license check described in "How Licensing Works" — activation once, then roughly monthly — carrying your serial, an anonymous machine identifier, and the app version, and nothing else, ever. Crash and diagnostic logs are written locally and are never sent automatically; you can generate a diagnostics bundle on demand, inspect it, and choose whether to email it to us.

FileRanger does store a great deal locally — a searchable index of your file names and paths, which is what makes it fast. That is described in full, without euphemism, in the Privacy Policy, which also explains how to scope, pause, and delete it. This section is about transmission; that page is about storage. Both are worth reading, and they do not contradict each other.

Third-Party and Open-Source Components

FileRanger includes the components below. Each is used under its own license, and those licenses govern those components rather than this agreement. Where a license requires it, the applicable notices and license texts are included with the software.

One of these is worth calling out. The Microsoft Windows App SDK is not open-source software — it is redistributed under Microsoft's own Software License Terms, which apply to that component in addition to this agreement. Everything else on the list is permissively licensed or public domain, which means the obligations are the ordinary ones: keep the copyright notices and the license texts intact.

Trademarks

"FileRanger", "CTRL Colab", and the associated logos and artwork are trademarks of CTRL Colab LLC. This agreement does not give you permission to use them. You may of course refer to FileRanger by name — in a review, an article, a tutorial, or a recommendation to a colleague — without asking us.

Windows and Microsoft are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. FileRanger is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Microsoft.

Disclaimer of Warranty

We built FileRanger carefully and we use it ourselves every day. We cannot promise it is free of defects, and the law expects this section to be conspicuous, so here it is in the conventional form:

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so parts of the above may not apply to you. Nothing here is intended to exclude a warranty or guarantee that cannot lawfully be excluded — see section 16.

Limitation of Liability

Nothing in this section limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so parts of the above may not apply to you.

Term and Termination

This agreement takes effect when you install FileRanger and continues until it ends.

You can end it at any time by uninstalling the software and deleting your copies, including your license file. Uninstalling also removes FileRanger's local data from your computer.

We may end it if you materially breach it — for example by redistributing your license file — in which case you must stop using FileRanger and delete it. In practice we would write to you first. Sections 8, 11, 12, 13, 16, and 17 survive termination.

Termination does not by itself entitle you to a refund. Refunds are governed by the Refund Policy.

Purchases, Refunds, and Taxes

FileRanger is $9.99 USD, one time. It is not a subscription and there is nothing to renew or cancel.

Purchases are handled by Paddle.com Market Limited, our merchant of record. Paddle is the seller on your receipt: it takes the payment, issues the receipt and invoice, and calculates and remits VAT or sales tax according to your billing country. The price is shown in USD; Paddle may present it in your local currency. Whether the displayed price is inclusive of applicable VAT or sales tax depends on the merchant's configuration for your billing country; the tax added, if any, is itemised at checkout before you confirm.

Refunds are set out in full on the Refund Policy page, and that page — not this one — is the authoritative statement of them. The short version is fourteen days, any reason, no justification required.

Governing Law

CTRL Colab LLC is a New Mexico limited liability company. That is where the company was formed. It is a separate question from which law governs this agreement, and the two should not be read as the same thing.

This agreement is governed by the laws of the the State of California, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and the courts of that jurisdiction will have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes — subject to the paragraph below.

This does not take away rights you have where you live. If you are a consumer, you keep the mandatory protections of the law of your own country or state, and you can bring proceedings in your local courts where that law entitles you to. We sell directly to people all over the world, including in the EU, the UK, and California, and a choice-of-law clause does not override consumer legislation. Where a mandatory local right conflicts with something in this agreement, the local right wins. The same principle applies to the statutory rights described on the Refund Policy page.

General

Entire agreement. This agreement, together with the Refund Policy and the Privacy Policy, is the whole agreement between you and CTRL Colab LLC about the FileRanger software. The Terms of Service cover our website and the purchase process; where the two overlap on a question about the software itself, this agreement prevails.

Severability. If a court finds any part of this agreement unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.

No waiver. If we do not enforce a term straight away, we have not given up the right to enforce it later.

Assignment. You may not transfer this agreement or your license to someone else. We may transfer it if the business is sold or reorganized, on the same terms.

Changes. These terms apply to the version of FileRanger you have. If we change them, the change applies to versions released afterwards; it does not retroactively alter the terms of a copy you already bought.

Contact

CTRL Colab LLC, a New Mexico limited liability company.
Email: hello@ctrlcolab.com

For legal service or postal correspondence, please contact us by email at the address above and we will provide a physical address on request.

If something in this agreement affects a decision you are about to make and you are not sure how to read it, ask us. We would rather answer the question than have you guess.