Hands-free activation on macOS for Jamf deployment

IMPORTANT: Hands-free activation is no longer supported starting with Capture One 22 (15.1.0).

With Capture One Pro (16.3.2), a new feature has been implemented for Enterprise and multi-user licenses, allowing individual users on a single machine to utilize Capture One seamlessly, eliminating the need for manual sign-ins and activations. See Hands-free activation for Enterprise and multi-user licenses.

With release 12.1.4 and later, Capture One Enterprise licenses can be activated "hands-free" via a simple JSON file located in the user's Application Support folder:

~/Library/Application Support/Capture One/HandsFreeActivateInfo.json.

Upon launching Capture One in a deactivated state, the JSON file will be parsed.

The JSON file contains a single object with five strings pairs: 

{
"firstName" : "Ben",
"lastName" : "Smith",
"email" : "bensmith@xyzzy.com",
"country" : "United States",
"code" : "AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-DDDD"
}

NOTE: This functionality is limited to Capture One Enterprise licenses only. Using a Pro license will silently fail, and the standard activation UI will be shown instead. You can find more information on Capture One Enterprise on the Capture One Enterprise product page.

The credentials within the JSON correspond to the license and the associated profile. Prior to deployment, the license code must be activated once to associate the license and profile.

As with any other online activation, all machines must be online and able to connect to the Capture One activation server activation.phaseone.com. If not, you will receive this error on launching the application:

The JSON file is only parsed when Capture One is not activated, while an already-activated application will not be deactivated or reactivated under a new license simply because of this JSON's presence.

To deactivate the software, it is necessary to manually remove the JSON file as well as perform the standard deactivation procedure. Failure to remove the JSON file will result in the software reactivating on the next launch.