Privacy and Security

Privacy & security

Gubbins is built around a simple promise: your data is yours, and it stays on your device. This page explains what that means in practice.

Private by default

• No account, no server. Gubbins has no sign-up and no backend. Your inventory lives in your browser's storage on your device — see How your data is stored.
• Nothing is uploaded unless you choose it. The app never phones home. Data only moves when you enable a feature and point it at storage or a service you control.
• Fully offline. Because nothing depends on a server, Gubbins keeps working with no connection at all.

The features that can move data — and how they're contained

A few optional features exist precisely to move data. Each is opt-in and stays under your control:

Feature	What it does	Your control
**[[Cloud sync	Cloud-Sync]]**	Keeps devices in step
**[[Backup & restore	Backup-and-Restore]]**	Portable copy of your data
**[[Export & import	Export-and-Import]]**	Open-format data out/in
**[[Bridge	Bridge-Overview]]**	Exposes data to other tools
**[[Scraping	Scraping-Supplier-Data]]**	Reads a supplier web page
**[[Camera scanning	Camera-Scanning]]** / **[[OCR	Receipt-and-Label-OCR]]**

Good habits

💡 Tip

• Keep a backup — local-first means you hold the only copy.
• Install the app and grant persistent storage so the browser won't evict your data.
• If you run the bridge, treat its token like a password, keep the default loopback bind, and leave write-back off unless you need it.

⚠️ Heads-up The flip side of local-first is that you are responsible for your data's safety. There's no cloud to recover it from if you clear your browser storage without a backup. A little routine — sync plus the odd backup — keeps it safe.

For the technically curious

Gubbins uses a strict content-security policy and keeps its network surface tiny by design. The project is open source (MIT-licensed) and public, so anyone can inspect exactly what it does — see the Gubbins repository.

Related pages

• How your data is stored — the local-first model.
• Backup & restore and Cloud sync — keeping data safe and portable.
• Bridge overview — the security model for the one networked feature.