FAQ

Does Smriti upload my photos?

No. Smriti is offline-first and processes media locally. The app never sends your photos, thumbnails, EXIF data, face embeddings, or anything derived from them to a server. The only network touchpoints are:

• Map tiles from OpenStreetMap when the Map view is open.
• Optional asset-pack download (ONNX runtime + ML models + GeoNames) from the project’s GitHub releases, only if you accept the first-run installer.
• Optional update check against api.github.com, only if you opt in from the first-run prompt or Settings.

See PRIVACY.md for the full disclosure.

Where is my database stored?

On the indexed drive inside .photovault/photovault.db. That keeps the library fully portable — unplug the drive, plug it into another machine, and Smriti can resume.

Can I use Smriti without internet?

Yes, after the optional assets are installed. Once the asset pack is in place, everything — scanning, face recognition, clustering, search, map (for previously-cached tiles), insights — works offline.

How do updates work?

Smriti can check for new releases automatically, but the check is opt-in — disabled by default. On first run a prompt asks whether you want it; you can change the answer later in Settings → Advanced.

When an update is available and you click Download in the banner, what happens depends on how you installed Smriti:

• AppImage or portable Windows zip — Smriti downloads the new artifact, verifies its SHA256 checksum, and atomically replaces the running binary. You’ll be prompted to relaunch.
• Windows MSI — triggers the Windows installer with a UAC prompt; relaunch from the Start menu when it completes.
• macOS .dmg — opens the downloaded .dmg; drag the new .app into /Applications as you did for the first install.
• Package manager (apt, brew, flatpak, winget) — the banner shows the matching upgrade command instead of self-replacing. Smriti won’t interfere with your package manager.

No photo data or telemetry leaves your machine during the check — only a standard User-Agent and your IP, which are implicit in any HTTP request. See PRIVACY.md.

Why does my face-recognition pass take a long time?

Face detection runs ONNX models on the CPU by default. A 10K-photo library typically takes 5-20 minutes on a modern laptop. Progress is shown in the People view. The pass is resumable — close and re-open the app, it picks up where it left off.

Why don’t I see results for very large libraries (>250K photos)?

The v1.0 release ships with a load cap of 250,000 photos per drive to keep memory use bounded. Libraries larger than that are on the post-v1.0 roadmap (full cursor-based streaming from the database); for now, you can split the library across multiple indexed drives to stay under the cap.

I built from source — is auto-update still safe?

Smriti detects source builds by looking at the executable path (anything under a target/debug or target/release directory). For source builds, the update banner won’t try to self-replace the binary; it just suggests git pull && cargo build --release.

Something’s broken. Where do I report it?

Use the issue tracker with the bug-report template, which asks for the info that helps most (OS, version, install method, logs). For questions or feature ideas, prefer Discussions.

Security vulnerabilities go through GitHub Security Advisories privately — see SECURITY.md.