Berth support

How support works, and what to try first when something looks wrong. The short version of the policy is in the app under Settings → About → How support works; this page says the same in full.

How support works

Where to write: Use Settings → About → Report a problem…, or write to support@byallmeans.work.
Response time: We answer every message within two working days.
Refunds: 14 days from purchase, counted from your first message to us, no questions asked. If you write on day 14 and our answer arrives on day 16, you still get the refund: the date that counts is the day you asked, never the day we replied. Write from the address on your receipt, or include the order number, so the merchant of record can find the order. A refund ends the license: each update of Berth carries the list of refunded licenses, so the key stops working once you install the next version. The same refund terms are part of the end-user license.
Uninstall: Settings → About → Remove Berth… lists each step before it does anything: it puts Apple’s Dock back from the backup Berth made before its first change (only if a Berth profile changed the Dock’s items), restores Apple’s Dock auto-hide and position, removes Berth from your login items, and, only if you tick the box, moves Berth’s data folder (~/Library/Application Support/Berth/) to the Trash and deletes the license file outright. It then shows Berth in Finder and quits, so you can drag the app to the Trash. Cancel at the step list and nothing changes. If a step fails, Berth stops there, says which step failed, and keeps running.
Your license never needs our server: A license is a signed token checked on your Mac against a key built into the app. Berth never contacts a license server, so it keeps working if we are offline, if a firewall blocks us, or if the company behind it changes. A lifetime license never expires, so there is nothing to renew.
What a report contains: Report a problem opens an email in your mail app for you to read and edit before sending; nothing leaves your Mac until you press Send. It carries the Berth and macOS versions, your Mac model, the kind of active profile and how many profiles you have, which widgets and notch readouts are in use, whether Calendar, Automation and Notifications are allowed, and whether an AI connection exists. It never carries file names, paths, event titles, profile names or account data; your home folder path and user name are replaced wherever they would appear. If Berth crashed recently, a checkbox adds the newest crash report (at most 200 lines), which you can read first.

Troubleshooting

Apple’s Dock still shows

Check the profile’s choice. Open Behavior → Apple’s Dock for the active profile. New custom profiles, starter layouts and the first Everyday profile auto-hide Apple’s Dock while they are active; a profile imported or saved earlier keeps the choice it had.
Turn on Keep it hidden completely. Auto-hide alone lets Apple’s Dock reveal at the edge it shares with Berth. Keep it hidden completely also sets Apple’s auto-hide delay to 1000 seconds while the profile is active, so the Dock no longer reveals there. It needs auto-hide and does nothing for native-only profiles.
You pressed ⌘⌥D. That is macOS’s own Dock shortcut and shows Apple’s Dock for the moment. Berth applies its override again at its next settings change.
Another Dock tool left a delay behind. Tools such as DockFix set a long auto-hide delay of their own. Berth never takes a delay of a minute or more for your setting: it removes the leftover when its own override ends and tells you once when it finds one.
Berth was force-quit or crashed. It keeps a small record of its temporary Dock changes (dock-overrides.json in its data folder) and puts them back at the next launch; a key you changed yourself in between is left alone.
Restore original Dock (Behavior, in the Apple’s Dock snapshot section) is the manual way back. It restores the untouched Dock preferences Berth saved before its first write and removes the 1000-second delay.
Running apps that are not pinned in a native profile stay in Apple’s Dock until they quit. Other apps’ notification badges are only in Apple’s Dock: macOS has no public way for another app to read them.

The dock appears over a full-screen app

Berth hides its dock (and the notch, unless you chose to show it in full screen) over full-screen apps. Several cases that used to bring it back by mistake are fixed: waking and logging in onto a full-screen app (Berth checks again about 1 and 3 seconds after a wake or unlock, and the lock screen never counts as the desktop), switching between two full-screen apps, and full-screen apps on a MacBook’s built-in display used alone. One trade-off remains by design: on a notched display used alone, a desktop whose only window is one app’s zoomed window counts as full screen, so the dock hides there (edge reveal still works when it is on).

If the dock still shows over a full-screen app, a trace of the moment is the most useful thing you can send. The shipped app contains no tracing; if support asks for a trace, we send you a development build, which keeps a rolling trace without any setup.

Use the development build until it happens again, and note the time, which display it was on, and whether the Mac went through sleep or the lock screen.
Quit Berth, and attach ~/Library/Application Support/Berth/diagnostics/panel-trace.jsonl and panel-trace.previous.jsonl beside it to a Report a problem email, with your notes. The trace keeps about the last 10 MB of events, so send it soon.

The trace holds event times, visibility requests, full-screen detection results, Space and display events, display geometry, and for each full-screen check the on-screen windows’ sizes, layers and owning app names (never window titles). It holds no screenshots, profile contents or keystrokes, and it stays on your Mac until you attach it.

Now Playing does not see my browser

By design. macOS has no public API for what is playing system-wide, and Berth uses public APIs only, so it does not read Safari, Chrome, Brave or other browser players (YouTube, YouTube Music, web Spotify). Now Playing supports Music, Spotify, Swinsian, VLC and QuickTime Player (QuickTime Player has play/pause only). Each asks once for Automation consent; when several are open, the one that is playing wins.

If a supported player is not detected: open the widget’s settings and press Connect, then check System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation → Berth and make sure the player is allowed.

Permissions

Berth asks for a permission only when you turn on the feature that needs it, and never at launch.

Permission	Asked when	Used for
Calendars	You add a Calendar widget or the Next Meeting readout and connect it	Your current or next timed event within seven days, and meeting links for Join
Reminders	You add a Reminders widget and connect it	Today’s reminders
Automation (per app)	You connect Now Playing to a player, choose Empty Trash… the first time, or first use New Window in Safari’s, Finder’s, Terminal’s or Ghostty’s dock menu while it runs	Reading and controlling that player; asking Finder to empty the Trash; opening that app’s new window
Notifications	You switch on a meeting reminder or an AI allowance alert, or allow alerts for the Focus timer widget	Those notifications only

Berth never asks for Screen Recording or Accessibility, and it does not need Full Disk Access (without it, the Trash tile shows full or empty from Berth’s own drops rather than reading the Trash folder).

The dialog never appeared, or you clicked Don’t Allow. macOS counts a dismissed request as a denial and will not ask a second time. Berth’s Settings show a note with a button to the right pane of System Settings → Privacy & Security; turn Berth on there. A Reminders tile that lost access says so, and a click opens the Reminders pane.

Trial and license

The trial. Every feature works for 7 days from Berth’s first launch, with no account, no registration and no card.
After the trial. Your dock keeps working with the items and profiles it has; you can still launch, switch profiles, rearrange, rename, remove items and change every setting, and widgets and the notch keep updating. Nothing is deleted. Only adding items (apps, files, folders, links, stacks, widgets, spacers, drops) and adding profiles (new, duplicated, imported, starter layouts) asks for a license. Settings opens at About with the license first, the menu bar shows one line, and a banner appears at most once per launch.
A lifetime license never expires and unlocks every feature.
Entering a license. Paste the whole line you received (it starts with BERTH-) into Settings → About → License and press Validate. Checking happens on your Mac only. Remove License… takes it off the Mac; you can enter it again at any time.
“This license was issued with a key Berth no longer accepts.” Your license is genuine but was signed with a key that has since been replaced. Write to the address on your receipt and you get a replacement license, free.
Reinstalling does not restart the trial. The trial’s start is kept in two places and the earlier date counts.

Sending a report

Settings → About → Report a problem… shows the full text of the report first.
Choose Open in Mail to start an email to support@byallmeans.work, or Copy Text to paste it anywhere else.
Add what you did, what you expected and what happened instead; a screenshot helps for anything visual.

If no mail app opens, the report is on the clipboard.