Your data
Export, offline behavior, switching servers, and self-hosting.
An inventory is only worth building if you can get it back out and if it survives the app. This chapter is the part to read before you have spent forty evenings on the garage, not after.
Exporting to CSV#
Under Settings → Export the mobile app offers Export Items as CSV and Export Bins as CSV, which hand the file to the usual share sheet. The web dashboard has the same two exports on your account page, and individual bins can also be exported from the bin itself.
The columns are the same wherever the file came from:
| Export | Columns |
|---|---|
| Items | Name, Description, Quantity, Min Quantity, Barcode, Tags, Bin, Room, Location |
| Bins | Name, Description, Room, Location, Item Count |
Files lead with a UTF-8 byte-order mark so accented characters survive Excel, which is otherwise the classic way an export arrives full of mojibake.
Photos are not in the export. The CSV is the text record only. If you are keeping an off-site copy for insurance, the pictures are the part that needs a separate plan.
Working offline#
The mobile app keeps its own database on the device. Everything works with no connection (adding, editing, photographing, searching) and syncs when a connection returns.
Two things need the server and will wait for it: Smart Scan, because the vision model runs there, and the semantic half of search. Keyword search against local data keeps working regardless.
This is not an edge case. Lofts, garages, basements and storage units are exactly where signal is worst and exactly where the inventory gets built.
Switching servers#
Signing in to a different server (cloud to self-hosted, or one NAS to another) is supported and does not strand the device. The app keeps each server's data distinct rather than merging two inventories into one confusing pile.
The server address is remembered across sign-outs, so going back to your own server is a password, not a setup.
What switching does not do is migrate anything. Moving an inventory from cloud to self-hosted is an export and a re-import, not a button.
Self-hosting#
The same app runs against a backend on your own hardware, typically a NAS. Photos, database, everything: on a machine you own, on your network.
Two things become yours in the process. Backups are the first: nobody else is taking them, and an inventory that only exists on one disk in the house it documents is not doing the job you built it for. Smart Scan is the second: it needs an API key you supply, billed to you.
Deleting your account#
Account deletion removes your data. It is a real deletion rather than a flag, and it is not reversible: export first if there is any chance you want the record.
What we can see#
On cloud, photos live in private storage and are served through links that expire after a few minutes; there is no public bucket and no permanent image URL. Usage of the paid AI features is logged per call, because that is what makes the meter in Settings → AI possible.
On a self-hosted setup, none of the above involves us at all. That is the point of it.
One thing is worth naming, because it is the exception to that and it is easy to miss: scanning a barcode sends the code to two public product catalogs, whoever is running the server. Barcodes covers what is sent and how to avoid it.