GPSLarp says it couldn't confirm my plan
A line under the row of mode buttons says the plan could not be confirmed, instead of naming one. Sometimes it arrives alongside mode badges that look like the free tier, on an account that is paying.
This message is about what GPSLarp knows, and not about your subscription. The app asks a server which plan your account is on; when the answer does not come back it says so, rather than filling the gap with the free tier. That refusal is the feature. Telling a paying customer they are on the free plan, because the question failed, is the exact mistake this sentence was written to stop.
01The four messages, word for word
There are four, one for each way the question can fail to be answered. GPSLarp writes them in its own source, so this is the whole of each and none of them varies.
01The server answered, and refused
GPSLarp could not confirm your plan — the server refused the request. If you have a subscription it is unaffected; signing out and back in usually fixes this.
Something reached the server and was turned away. The usual cause is a credential the app is holding that the server will not accept any more, which is why the app suggests signing out and in — that is what replaces it. Note what the sentence carefully does not say: it does not say you are on the free tier, because nobody established that.
02The server could not be reached at all
GPSLarp could not reach the server to confirm your plan. Any subscription you have is unaffected.
No answer came back. A dropped connection, a network that needs a login page, a firewall, or the server being unavailable — the app cannot tell those apart from your Mac, so it reports the one thing it knows. See Does GPSLarp need an internet connection? for what works without one.
03The question has not been asked yet
GPSLarp has not checked your plan yet.
Not a failure. This is the state before the first lookup of the launch has finished, and it is normally on screen for a moment. If it stays, treat it as the second message above.
04There is nobody to ask about
Sign in to see your plan.
The app has no usable session, so there is no account to look a plan up for. That is a different page: I can't sign in to GPSLarp.
If none of those is the sentence you have, the short fallback GPSLarp could not confirm your plan. appears when the app knows the lookup did not succeed but has no more specific reason to give. Everything on this page applies to it.
02What it means, and what it does not
Your subscription is not affected by this
Two of the messages say so in as many words, and the reason is mechanical: the desktop app reads your plan and never writes it. Nothing GPSLarp does on your Mac can cancel, pause, lapse or downgrade a subscription — the only things that change it are actions you take on the billing side. A failed lookup is a failed lookup.
The mode badges beside it may be out of date, and they are not evidence
The badges under each mode button — whether a mode's free run is still there — come from the last answer the app managed to get. When the current lookup fails, those can be left over from an earlier one, or absent. So a row that looks like the free tier, sitting under a message saying the plan could not be confirmed, is not two facts. It is one unanswered question shown twice, and the message is the honest half of it.
This is not a sign that you have been charged, or not charged
GPSLarp holds no billing record and displays none. What was charged, when, and what is due next are on your account page on gpslarp.com, which reads them from the payment processor. That page is the authority on the state of a subscription and this message is not evidence about it in either direction. How do I cancel my subscription? describes where those controls are.
03What to do, in order
01Read which of the four you have
The remedies differ and one of them is nothing at all. A refusal and an unreachable server look similar on screen and have opposite causes: one is a credential, the other is a network.
02If it could not reach the server, fix the network first
Confirm this Mac is online in the ordinary way — a browser page that is not already cached. Public and hotel networks that show a sign-in page intercept requests without failing them, which produces exactly this. A VPN or a filtering proxy can do the same.
03If the server refused, sign out and sign in again
The app's own message names this, and it is the remedy that matches the cause: signing in again replaces the credential the server declined. Use Sign out at the top of the sidebar, then sign in from the card that replaces it. Your saved places are on your Mac and are not touched by signing out — see Where are my saved locations kept?
04Reopen the app rather than waiting
GPSLarp asks this question on launch rather than polling, so a message from a lookup that failed ten minutes ago stays on screen until something prompts another one. Quitting and reopening is the reliable way to ask again.
05Check the account page from a browser
If you want to know what your subscription actually is, that is where to look, and it does not depend on the desktop app being able to reach anything. The Your account on gpslarp.com buttons in the app open it already signed in, and typing the address into a browser gets you to the same place.
04What still works meanwhile
An unconfirmed plan does not lock the app, and two behaviours here are worth knowing because they look inconsistent until you see the rule behind them.
A paid plan the app has already seen keeps working offline
Once GPSLarp has been told your account is paid, it remembers that and does not need to ask again before each run. So a subscriber who loses their connection can carry on. This is why the app can be unable to confirm your plan and still let you set a location.
A free run needs the server, every time
The count of free runs lives on the server rather than on your Mac, so a free run cannot be authorised without reaching it. When that fails, the app refuses the run and says it needs to reach the internet once to start it — not that you have run out. Those are different sentences on purpose. What do I get without paying? has the rest of how the grant is counted.
Stopping is never affected
The Stop control gives your iPhone its real GPS back and sits outside every check in the app — no plan, no session and no network is consulted first. That is deliberate, and it is the one thing on this page that is a property of the code rather than a report about a server. How do I put my real location back?
05If that did not work
Signing out and back in did not change it. Then the refusal is not about the credential the app was holding. Check the account page in a browser: if it shows your subscription normally, the two halves disagree and the app is the half that is wrong. If the account page also behaves oddly, the problem is not on your Mac at all.
It says the plan could not be confirmed on every launch. A network that intercepts requests will reproduce this indefinitely and looks exactly like a working connection in a browser. Try a different network once — a phone's hotspot is the usual test — because it separates "this Mac cannot reach the server" from "the server will not answer this account".
You are signed in and it says to sign in to see your plan. Those two states cannot both be true, and the sign-in one is what the app reports when the session it holds is not usable. I can't sign in to GPSLarp covers the session, including the fourteen-day window an offline Mac gets before one stops being accepted.
You have an activation code rather than a subscription. A code is redeemed in the app and does not depend on this lookup in the same way — I have an activation code — where does it go?
The honest limit of this page: it describes what the desktop app does when it cannot read your plan, and every sentence above is read off the app's own source. It cannot tell you what your subscription is. Only the billing side knows that, the account page is where it is shown, and no message in the desktop app should be read as a statement about your money in either direction.