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Glossary
Local storage
Local storage is a key and value store a site keeps inside your browser, tied to one address and held with no expiry.
Where it sits among the stores
A browser keeps several stores side by side on your disk, and one site can use all of them in the same visit.
Cookies
Small values sent with every request to that address, each with an expiry date of its own.
Local storage
Text under a key, kept until something clears it, and never sent with a request.
Session storage
The same shape, emptied when the tab that filled it is closed.
IndexedDB
A small database for larger structured data, kept beside the rest and just as long.
Your browser right now
This value is read in your browser on this page. It says whether this browser lets a site keep anything on your machine at all.
Ihr Gerät, jetzt gerade
- Storage allowed by this browser
- wird auf Ihrem Gerät gemessen
In Ihrem Browser gelesen und hier angezeigt. Nichts wird irgendwohin gesendet.
One profile one set of stores
Each profile gets an area of its own on this machine, so two profiles share nothing at all.
Two accounts opened in one profile share every store inside it. That is the cheapest link a platform can get, and reading it costs a site nothing.
What travels and what is erased
Storage is part of what keeps an account signed in, so it goes into a transfer file together with cookies and saved logins. Caches are dropped, the stores are not.
- 1
It travels with the profile
The transfer file carries the stores and leaves the caches beside them.
- 2
It is erased with the profile
Deleting a profile clears its stores on both browser engines.
- 3
The window closes first
Data is erased after the browser is gone, never from underneath it.
Often confused with
The cache
The cache holds copies of files to save a download. On its own it identifies nobody.
Cookies
Cookies ride along with requests, so a server sees them without asking. Storage is read by code running on the page.
A fingerprint
Storage is something a site left on your machine. A fingerprint is computed from the machine itself, so there is nothing there to delete.
What this does not do
- It does not hide anything. A value a site wrote is a value it can read back, and a separate profile only keeps that value away from your other accounts.
- There is no screen for reading or editing site storage. Cookies travel on their own; the other stores move only with the whole profile.
- Clearing it does not unlink accounts that are linked already. The platform keeps its own record of what happened.
- It does not close storage to a site. A browser that stores nothing is rarer than any value inside it, and it stands out at once.
Check it
Every claim above is one place in the product and one stand.
- Site storage goes into a transfer file and the caches do not
- apps/desktop/src/lib/bundle.js · apps/desktop/test/profile-bundle.js
- Each profile gets an area of its own on this machine
- apps/desktop/src/lib/profiles.js
- The browser is closed before a deleted profile's data is erased
- apps/desktop/src/main/main.js · apps/desktop/test/delete-leaves-nothing.js
- Cookies can be carried on their own, without the rest
- apps/desktop/test/cookie-transfer.js
Questions
- Does clearing cookies clear this too?
- On its own usually not, because they are two separate boxes in most browsers. In a profile here both go at once when the profile is deleted.
- Can one site read the storage of another?
- No. Each address gets a box of its own and the browser keeps the boxes apart.
- Is storage part of a fingerprint?
- No. A fingerprint is derived from the machine, while storage is something a site put there. A site usually reads both and treats the pair as one picture.
- Will a transfer keep me signed in?
- It carries the parts a browser holds: cookies, saved logins and the stores. Whether that is enough is up to the site and to how the account looked when you left it.
- Where does the app keep all of this?
- In a folder of its own on your computer, one area per profile. None of it goes anywhere by itself.
See what one profile keeps apart
Two profiles are free, with no card. Open two of them and watch a site treat each as its own machine.