Privacy

Your files stay on your machine.

Onley is a local duplicate-file tool. It does not create an account, show ads, or collect telemetry.

What Onley reads

Onley reads the folders you select and the local index at ~/.onley/local.db. It stores file paths, names, sizes, modification times and MD5 hashes in that index so later scans can skip unchanged files.

When replica mode is configured, the master URL is stored in ~/.onley/config.json.

Network access

Onley does not contact a server during normal scanning or cleanup. It uses the network only when you explicitly run a network feature such as serve or replica, or when you choose to download an update or open a link. The desktop client does not check for updates automatically.

Deletion

Deletion is permanent and local. The desktop client shows the exact files and asks for confirmation; the CLI does the same unless you pass -y. The desktop client checks size and modification time and skips files that changed since the scan. The CLI acts on the index snapshot; run a fresh scan before cleaning if files may have changed.

Third-party components

The desktop client is built with NSH, licensed under Apache 2.0. The CLI and desktop client also use the Rust crates listed in Cargo.toml. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for notices.

Contact

Questions or privacy concerns can be raised at github.com/fdaio/onley/issues.

Last updated: October 29, 2026