Troubleshooting

DAWTER tries to name its own failures rather than fail blank. These are the messages you are most likely to see and what each one actually means.

"Apple could not verify DAWTER is free of malware"

On first open, on a build that is not yet notarized by Apple. It does not mean anything was found — it means Apple has not inspected this build. To open it anyway: System Settings → Privacy & Security, find the message about DAWTER, and choose Open Anyway. You will only do this once.

"That file is on a drive that isn't connected"

Exactly what it says. The song is in your library and DAWTER remembers which drive the file was on; plug it in and try again. This is normal and not a problem to fix — a library spanning drives you do not keep attached is the case DAWTER exists for.

"That file is in a cloud folder that hasn't finished syncing"

Dropbox or Google Drive is showing a placeholder rather than the file. The folder exists, the bytes do not — yet. Let the sync finish and try again. Nothing is lost.

"DAWTER does not know where that file is"

The bounce is in your library but its location was never established, or it moved after the last scan. Two fixes: rescan the folder it lives in, or set the location by hand from the badge in More Info.

A bounce was not matched to its song

Use Find bounces, which searches more widely and explains each guess before you accept it. If your exports use a suffix DAWTER does not know, add it to the bounce words in Settings and the match will stick for every song.

"That bounce is too big"

Shared and hosted bounces cap at 60 MB, which is plenty for an mp3 and not enough for a full-length WAV. Export an mp3 to share, or put the file in your own Dropbox — a bounce that streams from your account has no size limit, because DAWTER is not storing it.

Dropbox keeps asking to reconnect

While the DAWTER Dropbox app is still awaiting Dropbox's production review, access tokens expire after seven days. Reconnecting is the whole fix, and the frequency is a review status rather than a bug.

"You have three active links"

The free plan's limit, and deliberately a refusal rather than a swap: a new link never silently kills an older one. Let one expire, revoke one from your account page, or go Pro for links that do not expire.

A share link plays nothing

If the page loads but will not start, the audio behind it is usually the issue: a pasted Google Drive link cannot be played by a browser from another site, which is Google's anti-hotlinking rather than something DAWTER can spell around. Share the bounce itself rather than a Drive link and DAWTER will host it.

Still stuck

If DAWTER is open, use the user menu → Report a bug: it attaches your version, platform and recent errors, so the problem arrives already half diagnosed. If it will not open, the support page works without signing in — which is the point of it.