HELP & CONTACT

MeshWatch Support

This page covers all MeshWatch products — SyslogWatch, DeviceWatch, TrafficWatch, CertWatch, ConfigWatch, TrapWatch, MeshServerWatch, MeshWatch Central, SecureServe and SubWatch — on macOS, Windows and Linux.

Email support

Write to support@meshwatch.app. Every email is read. First reply within two business days, Monday to Friday. Support is available in English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Please include the product name, its version number, and your operating system and version — that is usually enough to identify the problem on the first reply.

Do not send passwords, licence keys, SMTP credentials, SNMP community strings, or raw log contents. If a log excerpt is needed to diagnose something, redact it first or say so and a safe way to share it will be arranged.

Licence keys and billing

On Windows, Linux, and the direct-download macOS builds, paid editions are billed through Stripe. A signed licence key is generated automatically after payment and emailed to the address used at checkout — paste it into the app to activate. The key carries its own expiry date and is verified on your own computer, so activation works offline and the app never contacts a licensing server. Each renewal issues a fresh key by email.

If a licence key does not arrive within a few minutes of payment, check the spam folder first, then email support@meshwatch.app with the email address used at checkout and the key will be reissued.

SyslogWatch Pro bought through the Mac App Store is billed and managed entirely by Apple: no key is issued, and cancellation is done under App Store → your profile → Subscriptions. For every other purchase, cancel by emailing support before the renewal date; a key already issued keeps working until the expiry date printed in it, and the free features continue after that.

Getting started

Each product has its own guide — what to install, what to set on first run, which ports to open, and how to administer it: Installation and administration guides.

Two that are worth reading before you start, because they change something outside the app. TrafficWatch becomes the DNS server for your network and records which device asked for which domain — tell the people who share that network first. MeshWatch Central is a server you run yourself, not a desktop app; the Central guide covers installing it and connecting each product to it. MeshServerWatch is also server software: install the Manager once, then the agent on each server you want to watch — the MeshServerWatch guide covers both, with the certificate fingerprint and one-line installs.

Two products are not covered there. SecureServe is Early Access: install the notarised macOS PKG or unpack the Linux archive on the host that will serve files, then work through the bundled configuration file — treat these builds as a self-hosted developer preview, with no independent security audit completed yet. SubWatch is a web app with nothing to install; everything stays in your own browser's storage, so take a backup from the Backup panel after your first entry, because clearing browser data will erase it.

Common problems

Nothing is arriving. Confirm the sending device and the app agree on the port, that both machines can reach each other, and that the firewall allows incoming connections. This is the cause in the large majority of cases.

Port 53 is already in use (TrafficWatch). On Linux this is almost always systemd-resolved: set DNSStubListener=no in /etc/systemd/resolved.conf and restart it. On Windows, look for the DNS Server role, Internet Connection Sharing, or a local DNS proxy such as Pi-hole or AdGuard Home. On macOS, another resolver you installed yourself. For the headless service on a Linux server, bind only the server’s LAN address with --dns-host and systemd-resolved can stay as it is — see the TrafficWatch guide.

The window opens but stays blank. Extract the download into a new, empty folder rather than over a previous version, with no copy of the app still running — a partial extraction produces exactly this symptom. Then verify the download against the published checksum. Current builds report their own startup failures: the window shows the error, or open Help → Open Data Folder and send renderer.log, or press Ctrl+Shift+I and copy the Console tab.

Linux server: Missing X server or $DISPLAY. The desktop apps need a graphical session. On a server without one, SyslogWatch (.deb and .tar.gz), TrafficWatch and TrapWatch (.deb) include a headless mode that serves the same screen to your browser, with a systemd unit — see SyslogWatch, TrafficWatch and TrapWatch. DeviceWatch, CertWatch and ConfigWatch have no headless mode: run them in a desktop session on that machine, or forward the display over SSH with ssh -X.

The app will not start on Ubuntu 24.04 or later. These releases restrict unprivileged user namespaces, which Electron's sandbox relies on. Run the binary with --no-sandbox, or install the .deb instead — it sets the sandbox helper permissions during installation.

Linux: credentials stored as plain text. Without gnome-keyring or libsecret present, licence keys and SMTP passwords cannot be encrypted at rest, and the app warns about this in Settings. Install either package and restart. The .deb pulls in libsecret for you. The headless mode on a server has no keyring by design: it stores these as files readable only by the service user (mode 0600).

MeshServerWatch: a server does not appear. On that server run meshserverwatch-agent test, then meshserverwatch-agent status; both say in plain words what is wrong — a certificate fingerprint that does not match, a revoked token, no free licence seat, or TCP 8455 blocked on the way to the Manager. The messages and what to do about each are in section 9 of the guide.

Alert email is not being delivered. Alerts go out through the SMTP server you configure, not through us. Check the credentials, the port, and whether your provider requires an app-specific password. Rate limits, cooldowns and digest windows are deliberate — a suppressed count travels with the next message, so a quiet inbox is not hiding a storm.

Downloads, signatures and checksums

Every product page publishes a SHA256SUMS file next to its downloads. Verify with shasum -a 256 -c on macOS and Linux, or CertUtil -hashfile <file> SHA256 in Windows Command Prompt.

macOS builds are signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarised by Apple, so Gatekeeper opens them without a warning. If macOS says a build cannot be verified, the download is incomplete or altered — re-download and check the SHA-256 before opening it.

Windows installers are Authenticode-signed and timestamped. The certificate is new, so SmartScreen may still show a warning until it has built reputation; if it does, choose More info → Run anyway. The published checksum on each download page is the way to confirm you have the genuine file.

Previous versions are kept for a while in case a new release causes trouble on your setup. They are on the previous versions page: sign in with your company name and work email (a link is emailed, no password) or with a licence key. Versions from before 25 September 2026 are not offered.

Where your data lives

All MeshWatch desktop products store their data only on the computer they run on; MeshWatch Central and the MeshServerWatch Manager store theirs on the server you run them on. Nothing is sent to us, to analytics providers, or to advertising networks. The on-device AI features in SyslogWatch, DeviceWatch and TrafficWatch run inside the application and make no network calls at all. The full detail is in the Privacy Policy, and the licence terms are in the Terms of Use.