TameChaos
Support

TameChaos Studio support

Help for the TameChaos Studio app on Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Windows. There is no account to make, nothing to sign in to, and no ticket portal — the answers are on this page, and a person reads the address below.
Email Studio supportStudio documentation

Email support for TameChaos Studio

support@tamechaos.com

One address, for every platform Studio ships on. We read every message and aim to reply within two business days — usually sooner, and always from a person. Email is the support channel: there is no phone line, no chat queue, and nothing you need an account to open.

Not about the app? The contact page has the sales, press, and general routes.

What to include

Five lines that turn a report into a fix

None of it is required — write to us anyway. But a report carrying these gets answered in one round trip instead of three, and the mail link above is prefilled with them.
Platform and OS version
Mac, iPad, iPhone, or Windows — and which version of macOS, iPadOS, iOS, or Windows it is running.
Studio version and build
The version and build number Studio shows in its About window, so we know exactly which build you are on.
What you were doing
The surface you were in — topology canvas, facility, sourcing, HMI mockup, notes, export — and the steps that led up to it.
What you expected, and what happened
Both halves. The gap between them is usually the whole report, and it is the part that is hardest to guess at afterwards.
Whether it happens again
Once, every time, or only on one project. A screenshot of the state you can see helps; a screen recording helps more.

What not to send. Never send us your project passphrase, and don’t send a project file unless we have asked and you have decided you want us to have it. Studio is built so we cannot read your work, and support does not need it — a screenshot, a description, and the version numbers above are enough for almost everything.

Start here

Most of it is already written down

The documentation and the changelog cover the questions that arrive most often. Both are on this site, statically, with nothing to sign in to.
Studio documentation
What Studio is, the platforms it runs on, the design authority it holds, its standards-compatible symbols, and where procurement fits.
Getting started
A short orientation to the four products, what each one is for, and how design-time and runtime authority divide between them.
Core concepts
The vocabulary — Studio projects, facilities, topology nodes, connectors and containers, bills of materials, experiments and runs.
Changelog
What changed and when. Worth a look before you write: the behaviour you are chasing may be a release note rather than a bug.
Pre-release

Testing an early build is not the same as using a released one

Studio ships to testers before it reaches a store, and the two situations get different answers. Here is which one you are in, and where each report goes.
On a pre-release build
Studio is pre-release, and early builds go out by invitation — on TestFlight for the Apple platforms, ahead of the store release. The fastest route from a TestFlight build is TestFlight’s own “Send Beta Feedback”: it attaches the build number, your device, and any screenshot you mark up, so we get the context without asking for it. Email works too. Expect rough edges and expect them to move; a pre-release build is early access, not a finished product.
On a released build
A support request about a shipped release is a different thing, and it gets a different answer: we treat it as something that should already work, rather than as feedback on a build still being changed. Email is the route, and the checklist above is what makes it quick. If a release changed the behaviour you are reporting, the changelog will usually say so.

Not a tester yet?

Early access is requested from the Studio page — one ask, one place, so nothing has to be kept in step here. The Apple builds go out through TestFlight ahead of the store release; the Windows build’s channel hasn’t been announced.

Request early access
Common questions

The things Studio gets asked, answered plainly

Short answers to the questions that come with a local-first, encrypted, offline app — including the one it is important to read before you need it.

I lost my project passphrase. Can you recover it?

No — and this is the one to read before you need it. Your Studio project is encrypted on your device, and any copy of it that leaves that device — a backup, a snapshot, a project handed to another machine — is sealed with a key wrapped under a passphrase you choose. We never receive that passphrase, we hold no copy of it, and there is no master key, no reset link, and no support path that opens a project without it. If you lose your passphrase, we cannot recover it for you, and the project it protects cannot be opened by anyone — including us.

That is a deliberate design decision, not a gap: Studio is used for facility topology, control-system architecture, device inventory, and site photographs, and a recovery path we could walk is a recovery path someone else could walk. Two habits make it a non-event — keep the passphrase wherever you keep your other credentials, and restore a backup once, on purpose, while nothing is wrong.

Where does my project actually live?

In one project package on your own device — the design database, every photo and datasheet you attached, and the previews, all encrypted at rest. It is a file you own, in a location you chose. Studio is local-first: it opens and edits that project with no network connection and no account, and nothing you author is uploaded to us.

The deliberate exception is what you generate to share. A documentation package exported as Markdown or PDF is something you decided to publish, so it leaves the encrypted container as a normal file — and from that point it is governed by wherever you put it.

How do backups and restore work?

A backup is a versioned, encrypted snapshot of the whole project, written to a destination you pick — a local file, your files app, or a folder you keep in a personal cloud drive. Studio tracks the snapshots it made so you can restore one, take an earlier version, or duplicate a project from a backup. Backing up is never required for Studio to work.

Because the archive is encrypted before it leaves the app, whichever service holds that folder holds ciphertext, not your design — and the passphrase above is what opens it. This release has no TameChaos-hosted backup and no cloud sync of your projects; what the app does and does not send us is set out in full in the Studio app privacy policy.

How do I move a project between my Mac and my iPad?

By snapshot. Studio packages the project into a single encrypted archive, and the other device opens it with the same passphrase — no account, no sync service, and no network in between. That is also why the passphrase matters even if you never back anything up: it is what makes a project portable at all.

The key for day-to-day use is held in your device’s own secure credential store and never leaves it, which is the flip side of the same design — an archive without its wrapped key can only be opened on the machine that wrote it. If a project opens on one device and reports a missing key on another, that archive is the one to check first. Studio is single-user with snapshot handoff; it has no live sync and no simultaneous multi-device editing.

Do I need an account to use Studio?

No. Every editor works signed out, nothing you author requires an account, and you can use Studio indefinitely without making one. Signing in does exactly one thing: it lets Studio pull the component catalog. Sign out and your projects are untouched — they were never tied to the account.

If you do sign in and want the account closed or the information behind it deleted, email support@tamechaos.com and we will handle it. The account details we hold, and why, are listed in the Studio app privacy policy.

Why is Studio asking for my location?

Only because you tapped “Set location from GPS” on a facility. Studio takes a single, one-shot fix while you are using the app, writes that coordinate onto that facility, and stops. There is no background location and no tracking of any kind, and the coordinate is stored in your own encrypted project on your device — it is never transmitted to us.

It is entirely optional. A facility’s location can be typed in as an address or dropped as a pin with no location permission granted at all, and declining the permission changes nothing else in the app. If you granted it and want it back, revoke it in your device’s privacy settings; the coordinates already saved stay in your project until you change them.

Studio doesn’t do the thing I need. Is that a bug?

Possibly not — some of it is deliberate. Studio designs and documents a system; a runtime executes it. It has no simulation engine, its HMI mockups are design artifacts rather than live dashboards, its comms topology is drafting only, and it has no quotes, purchase orders, or ordering rail. Those boundaries are set out one by one in what Studio is and isn’t on the Studio page.

If what you need is on the wrong side of one of those lines, tell us anyway — knowing what people reach for is how the roadmap gets decided. If it is on the right side and still doesn’t work, that is a bug, and the checklist above is how to report it.

The app’s privacy policy and terms

What TameChaos Studio collects — two optional things, both described in full — and the terms that apply. Both are static pages on this site, with nothing to sign in to.
Studio app privacy policyTermsBack to Studio