Privacy and local data

Compareel analyzes and compares all media locally on your computer. There are no user accounts, analytics, telemetry, cloud services, or background daemons.

Everything stays local

  • Your videos, images, thumbnails, folder paths, scan reports, and review sessions never leave your computer.
  • The bundled FFmpeg decoders are compiled for local decoding only, with network protocols disabled.
  • SVG images are rendered locally without executing scripts or loading external files or URLs.

You can review a summary of local storage inside the app at any time from Help > Data and privacy (or the Data and privacy button in Tools > Settings…).

Privacy mode

Press Ctrl+Shift+H (Cmd+Shift+H on macOS), click the Privacy eye button in the toolbar, or choose View > Privacy mode to hide both player previews and result thumbnails on screen at once and pause playback.

You can also hide either part on its own from the View menu:

  • Hide both video previews (shown as Hide both image previews in Images mode)
  • Hide thumbnails

While Privacy mode is turned on, automatic background saving of last-review.cvsession (Remember last review) is paused.

Important limitation: Privacy mode only hides images and videos on screen. Compareel does not encrypt or securely erase your media files, local cache database, saved .cvsession files, operation history, or Quarantine… copies on disk.

Clear history

Choose File > Clear history… (or click Clear history… in Tools > Settings…) to remove Compareel’s local records without touching your media files. All five categories are ticked by default, and you can untick any item you want to keep:

  • Scan results — Clears the results currently on screen and deletes last-scan-report.txt.
  • Reviews and decisions — Removes last-review.cvsession, last-cleanup.cvsession, saved review decisions (Reviewed, Keep both files, Review later), and ignored pairs.
  • File operation history — Clears recorded copies, moves, quarantines, and removals from the local journal. Completed transfers can no longer be undone with Undo last copy or move… afterwards. (Interrupted operations that still need manual review remain listed until checked.)
  • Scan cache — Clears cached visual signatures, hashes, and thumbnails from scan-cache-v1.sqlite, compacts the database, and deletes any paused scan file list (.scan-job).
  • Recent folders — Clears saved included, excluded, and protected source folders.

Click Clear history to apply your selection. If you only want to free disk space used by cached media signatures while keeping your folders, decisions, and undo history, use Clear scan cache in Tools > Settings… instead.

Local data folder locations

Compareel stores its configuration and local records in your per-user application configuration directory (Qt AppConfigLocation), unless you start Compareel with --data-dir <folder>:

  • Windows (installer and portable .zip): %LOCALAPPDATA%\Compareel (for example C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Compareel)
  • macOS: ~/Library/Preferences/Compareel
  • Linux (Flatpak io.github.turxlab.Compareel): ~/.var/app/io.github.turxlab.Compareel/config/Compareel
  • Linux (native / built from source): ~/.config/Compareel (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/Compareel)

To open the exact folder Compareel is using on your system, open Tools > Settings… (Ctrl+,, Cmd+, on macOS) and click Open folder next to Local data folder.

Files stored in this folder:

  • settings.ini — Preferences, window state, and saved scan source lists.
  • scan-cache-v1.sqlite — Cached file identities, SHA-256 hashes, metadata, compressed visual signatures (capped at 256 MiB / 100,000 current media entries), review decisions, ignored pairs, and operation history.
  • scan-cache-v1.sqlite.scan-job — Remaining file list for a paused scan (up to 100,000 files / 32 MiB), removed when the scan finishes or when the scan cache is cleared.
  • last-review.cvsession — Background session saved when Remember last review is enabled (paths, identities, decisions, and view state; no media or thumbnails).
  • last-cleanup.cvsession — Recovery snapshot written before moving or transferring files.
  • last-scan-report.txt — Plain-text report from the most recent scan.

If you add custom translation files (languages/*.json), Compareel looks in languages next to Compareel.exe when running from a writable Windows folder (such as the portable .zip), or otherwise in %APPDATA%\Compareel\languages on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/Compareel/languages on macOS, ~/.var/app/io.github.turxlab.Compareel/data/Compareel/languages in the Linux Flatpak, and ~/.local/share/Compareel/languages on native Linux.

Update checks

  • Asked first: On your first run, Compareel asks Would you like Compareel to check for updates automatically? (Yes / No) before making any network request.
  • What is sent: When enabled, Compareel requests the latest release tag from GitHub (https://api.github.com/repos/turxlab/compareel/releases/latest) at most once every 24 hours. Nothing about your files, folders, or usage is sent.
  • Change or check manually: Toggle Check for updates when Compareel starts in Tools > Settings…, or run a one-time check with Help > Check for updates… (Compareel > Check for updates… on macOS).
  • Disabled in Flatpak: In the Linux Flatpak (io.github.turxlab.Compareel), the first-run prompt, the Settings checkbox, and Check for updates… are disabled and hidden because updates are handled by Flatpak and Flathub.

Next: FAQ answers common questions about matching behavior, format limits, first-run warnings, and bug reports.

Compareel is free software under the GNU GPL v3. © 2026 Ensar Yanar.