Settings, local storage and recovery
AnnotateIt stores projects and media on the current device. Application settings control appearance, local AI, backup and platform-specific administration; project settings control annotator behaviour for one project. No setting enables cloud sync, so recovery depends on profile backups and project archives made before the device or browser storage is lost.
Application settings
- Appearance — theme, accent colour and language: English, Spanish or Brazilian Portuguese. The language choice applies across the interface; user labels and external model names are not translated.
- Models — the Find by example preference for the active SAM engine, a link to the Models catalog and the collapsible Model files & diagnostics inventory.
- AI Assistant — select OpenAI API or Claude API and manage separate provider keys. Windows and macOS also offer ChatGPT via Codex and Claude Code through installed CLIs.
- Backup — export or restore the complete local profile.
- Profile and Users — local user management on desktop.
- REST API — desktop-only loopback automation, disabled by default and protected with personal access tokens.
Project settings
Inside a project, Settings controls the default annotation tool, segmentation preview opacity, whether right-click places negative points, prediction-source preferences, confirmation before deleting labels, upload-dialog behaviour and whether prompt and attribute fields appear in the label editor. Applicability follows the task and platform: an irrelevant control is omitted. Hiding prompt or attribute fields changes the editor layout and never deletes stored data.
Where local data lives
| Build | Storage behaviour |
|---|---|
| Web | Structured data in SQLite/WASM using the browser’s Origin Private File System; media content stored separately in browser storage |
| Windows and macOS | Local application database and media files inside the app data directory |
| iPhone and iPad | Local native app storage with mobile import and media ceilings |
The browser database uses exclusive access, so a second tab or window shows that the app is already open instead of risking two writers. The app requests persistent browser storage, but the browser may refuse it. Clearing site data, uninstalling the native app or losing the device can remove the only working copy.
Choose the recovery artifact by scope
- Recover the entire installation
- Profile backup from Settings → Backup
- Move or safeguard one complete project
- Export project
- Restore an earlier state of one dataset in the same installation
- Dataset Versions
- Continue training in another tool
- Dataset export — an interchange artifact, not a complete backup
Backups are manual. A profile backup includes projects, media, imported models and settings, but is built as one artifact and refuses libraries beyond its supported size rather than risking a crash. For very large libraries, export projects separately.
Mobile limits
iPhone and iPad cap an image at 32 MiB, a video at 128 MiB or 10 minutes and an imported archive at 128 MiB. Image/video decoder and rendering limits still apply below those ceilings. The Models hub, custom ONNX import, Semantic search, Text prompt and heavy downloadable engines are absent. These are device-runtime limits, not paid-tier restrictions.