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Overview

For problems specific to a feature, see that feature’s page — most have a Troubleshooting section at the bottom. This page covers installation, offline mode, and support.

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Where to get help

Click the Help & feedback icon in the sidebar (or press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+/) to open one dialog with everything: documentation, changelog, keyboard shortcuts, bug reports, feature requests, free-form messages, and the Discord invite. Bug reports automatically attach app version, OS, recent errors, and up to the last 10 MB of the local log file — you can turn that off before submitting.

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Installation & Updates

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A new version hasn’t reached you yet

New releases roll out to existing installs in stages, so a version can be announced a few days before your copy offers it. Nothing is wrong, and you don’t need to reinstall. If you’d rather not wait, download the current version from the downloads page and install it over your existing copy. Your library, settings and analysis stay as they are.

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v2.0.0 Migration

v2.0.0 introduced a new database architecture that is not compatible with previous versions. After updating, you’ll be prompted to migrate. We recommend skipping the migration and starting fresh with a reanalysis of your samples. A fresh install from the downloads page is only required if the migration does not complete successfully.

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macOS Apple Silicon Build

Redownload the app from the website and select the correct version for your CPU architecture. A previous bug caused Apple Silicon users to receive Intel builds.

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Offline Mode

After signing in once while online, all local features work offline:
  • Sample browsing, filtering, and search by name and tokens
  • Audio playback with Tempo and Key Lock
  • Sound Profile filtering
  • Similar Samples
These features require an internet connection:

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Samples won’t play or show up as missing

If files you added before suddenly won’t play, show as missing, or can’t be written to, Sample Vault has most likely lost read access to where they live on disk. The app only sees a sample if the account running it can reach that path. This is most common with samples kept on a network share or external drive:
  • The drive or share isn’t mounted, or mounted at a different path than when the samples were added.
  • On a machine with more than one user account, the share is mounted under a different account than the one running Sample Vault, so the app inherits permissions that can’t read or write those files.
Make sure the location is connected and readable by the same account you run Sample Vault under, at the same path it had when you added the samples. Remounting it correctly restores playback and clears the missing state with no reanalysis needed. If a sample has genuinely moved, playing it offers a Locate option that points it at its new path and brings along other files that moved with it. If you reorganised a whole folder — sorted sounds into new subfolders, renamed things — each sample folder has a Reconnect moved files action that finds every sample’s file wherever it ended up and reattaches it, keeping the tags, descriptions, favourites, and collections already on it. Files are matched on name and size, and on their contents where that isn’t enough to tell two apart; anything it can’t identify with confidence is left alone rather than guessed at. Nothing on disk is touched. Run this before scanning the folder for new samples — a scan treats a moved file as a brand-new one and adds an unprocessed copy alongside the original. Reconnected samples keep their existing place in the folder tree until the next full scan. If files were deleted for good and you want them out of the library, each sample folder has a Remove missing files action that checks every sample and removes the ones whose files no longer exist, instead of resolving them one at a time. It never touches files on disk, keeps cloud-backed samples, and — so a disconnected drive can’t wipe a folder — removes nothing when the folder itself is offline. In that case, reconnect the drive or share first.

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Database is misbehaving

If scans, deletes, or batch operations stall unexpectedly — or a backup is refused because the database looks corrupted — run Settings → App Data → Repair Database. It runs an integrity check on the local database and fixes what it finds, rebuilding drifted indexes and, if the file’s internal structure is damaged, rebuilding the database file itself. Safe to run any time — no data loss.

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Database is larger than my library

The database file doesn’t shrink on its own when you remove folders or samples, so it can stay much bigger than the library it now describes. Run Compact Database to give that space back. It rewrites the whole file, so allow some time on a large library and leave free disk space roughly equal to the current database size.

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Browser tab

Browser access needs a Professional Suite subscription. If you see a “Subscription required” screen at sign-in, open the pricing page to upgrade, or keep using the desktop app. Only samples uploaded to cloud storage appear in the browser library. If samples are missing in the browser but visible in desktop, open the desktop app and right-click the directory → Upload samples to the cloud. They appear in the browser as soon as the upload finishes. Library scanning, sample analysis, Deep Tagging, Ableton Link, and drag-from-local-disk are desktop-only — the browser surfaces a “desktop app required” prompt for each.