Main Content

Activate MATLAB Installation Manually

Activation Overview

Activation is a process that verifies licensed use of MathWorks® products. This process validates the license and ensures that it is not used on more computers or by more users than allowed by the license option you selected. Normally, activation is performed during installation, and there is no separate action for the end user.

However, there may be occasions to manually activate the software, for example, if the activation during installation fails for some reason, or if the installation was performed using a File Installation Key and no license was supplied.

This topic describes how to activate the software manually should you need to.

You can follow these procedures also if you are an end user who has been asked to activate MATLAB® software that was not installed by you.

  • To perform an online activation from within MATLAB, the computer must be connected to the Internet.

  • To perform an offline activation from within MATLAB, you must have a license file.

    • If you are using an individual license, use an online machine to go to License Center to get the license file (if you don't know what type of license you have, you can find that out in License Center).

      • Select license to use.

      • Go to the Install and Activate tab.

      • Click Activate to Retrieve License File. Download and transfer the license file to the offline machine.

    • If you are using a shared license, contact your administrator to get a license file configured especially for your organization. Copy it to the offline machine.

Step 1. Launch Activation App

You can launch the activation app from within MATLAB or from the operating system command line.

Launch Activation App from MATLAB

Follow these steps:

  1. On the Home tab, in the Resources section, click Help > Licensing.

  2. Select Activate Software.

Launch Activation App from Command Line

  • Windows® Systems — in the search box on the taskbar, enter "Activate" to bring up the Activate MATLAB application.

  • macOS Systems — Double-click the activation application icon in the MATLAB application package. To view the contents of the MATLAB application package, right-click (or Ctrl+click) the package and select Show Package Contents.

  • Navigate to your MATLAB installation folder and open the activation application.

    • Windows Systems — Double-click the MathWorksProductAuthorizer.exe file in matlabroot\bin\$ARCH folder, where matlabroot is your MATLAB installation folder, and $ARCH is a platform-specific subfolder, for example: matlabroot\bin\win64.

    • Linux and macOS Systems — Run MathWorksProductAuthorizer in the matlabroot\bin\$ARCH, folder, where matlabroot is your MATLAB installation folder, and $ARCH is a platform-specific subfolder, for example: matlabroot\bin\glnxa64 folder.

Step 2. Activate License

Note

The license file (offline) workflow is started automatically if the computer is offline. However, if the computer is connected to the Internet, it starts the online workflow.

  • To switch to the license file workflow, from Advanced Options, select I want to use a license file.

  • To switch from the license file workflow to the online workflow, from Advanced Options, select I want to link to a license.

Online Workflow

  1. Enter the email address you use for your MathWorks Account.

    If you do not have a MathWorks Account, you can create one at this time.

  2. Select a license from the list of licenses linked with your MathWorks Account and then click Next.

  3. Make sure the selections are correct and then click Activate.

Offline (License File) Workflow

  1. If you are prompted for your email address, under Advanced Options, select I want to use a license file.

  2. Enter the path to the license file and then click Activate.

What's Next?

You are now ready to begin using MathWorks software.

See one of the following topics to get started:

Related Topics

<#include "/includes_content/releases/_global/live_chat.html"/>