Where Edge-Drop Stores Data on Disk

A clipboard shelf stores a lot: text snippets, URLs, file paths, image thumbnails, the full payloads of large items, settings, pinned items, and the index that ties them together. For a local-first tool, where all of this lives on disk is a privacy question, a backup question, and a troubleshooting question. This guide covers the on-disk layout Edge-Drop uses on Windows, what is encrypted and how, where image and file payloads live, and what to back up or wipe. For the uninstall workflow see how to uninstall Edge-Drop cleanly; for the launch-at-login mechanism see how to launch Edge-Drop at login.

The top-level layout

Edge-Drop's user data lives under %APPDATA%\Edge-Drop. The exact folder name may vary slightly by version; the canonical location is:

%APPDATA%\Edge-Drop\
  config.json
  history\
    index.db
    payloads\
      *.bin
      *.png
  logs\
    *.log
  cache\
    thumbnails\
      *.png

• config.json — user settings (Behaviour, Position, Appearance tabs). Plain JSON; not sensitive on its own.
• history\index.db — the in-memory history list persisted to disk. Encrypted via DPAPI at the file level.
• history\payloads\ — large item payloads (images, large text files) offloaded from the index. Encrypted at the file level.
• logs\ — diagnostic logs. Plain text. Rotated by size.
• cache\thumbnails\ — image thumbnails for the shelf. Regenerated on demand; not sensitive.

For most users, the only files worth knowing about are config.json (for backup) and history\ (for privacy and backup).

What is encrypted

Edge-Drop encrypts the history index and the payloads at rest using Windows DPAPI, exposed in Electron via the safeStorage API. The encryption:

• Uses the user's Windows credentials as the key material. The data can only be decrypted by the same Windows user account on the same machine.
• Applies per-file, not per-item. Each file in history\ is encrypted as a blob.
• Is always on; there is no opt-out. The user cannot disable it.

What this means in practice:

• Another Windows user on the same machine cannot read the history. DPAPI binds decryption to the user's credentials.
• An attacker who steals the disk but does not have the user's Windows password cannot decrypt the history without cracking DPAPI. This is non-trivial but not impossible; see does DPAPI protect clipboard history from other users.
• An administrator who can take ownership of the files can delete them but still cannot decrypt them without the user's credentials. The encryption protects confidentiality, not availability.

For the broader encryption question, see does a local clipboard app need encryption at rest.

What is not encrypted

Several categories of data are not encrypted:

• config.json — settings are stored as plain JSON. This is fine because settings are not sensitive (they contain preferences, not content). A user with file system access can read which settings are on, but not the clipboard history.
• logs\ — diagnostic logs are plain text. They typically do not contain clipboard content, but may contain metadata like item counts, timestamps, and error messages. For privacy-sensitive workflows, logs can be deleted safely; Edge-Drop recreates them as needed.
• cache\thumbnails\ — thumbnails are derived from image items. They are not separately encrypted. For most workflows this is acceptable because the thumbnail is a small, low-resolution version of an image that is already visible on the shelf.

If a user is uncomfortable with these plain-text artefacts, the simplest remediation is to enable BitLocker or another full-disk encryption solution at the Windows level. This protects the entire %APPDATA% tree, not just Edge-Drop's portion of it.

Where payloads live

Large items — images over a few kilobytes, large text snippets over a threshold — are offloaded from the index to the payloads\ directory. The index stores metadata (timestamp, format, source app, pinned flag) and a pointer to the payload file.

The payload file is named with a hash of the content, which means:

• The same content copied twice does not create two payload files; the second copy references the existing one.
• Renaming or manually editing a payload file breaks the index reference; the item will appear as a "broken" entry on the shelf.
• Deleting a payload file manually orphans the index entry.

For routine use, the user should not touch the payloads\ directory. For troubleshooting — e.g., if the index has grown very large and disk space is tight — it is safe to delete the entire history\ directory; Edge-Drop will recreate it empty on next launch. This loses all history, which is the point.

How disk usage grows

A few rough numbers:

• A typical text item: a few hundred bytes in the index.
• A typical URL item: a few hundred bytes in the index, plus a small favicon in cache\thumbnails\ (if a favicon is available).
• A typical image item: the thumbnail in cache\thumbnails\ (a few KB) plus the full image in payloads\ (varies; a screenshot can be 1-4 MB).
• A typical file item: a reference (path) in the index; the file itself is not copied.

Over a week of active use, with images enabled, the payloads\ directory can grow to 100-500 MB. Over a month, it can grow to 1-2 GB. Auto-delete timers (see how to set auto-delete timers in Edge-Drop) bound this growth by aging items out, which also deletes their payloads.

If disk usage is a concern, the simplest remedies are:

1. Enable a 24-hour or 7-day auto-delete timer.
2. Disable image capture if not needed (via the format filters — see how to filter text links images and files).
3. Periodically clear unpinned items.

Backing up and restoring

To back up Edge-Drop data:

1. Quit Edge-Drop (tray icon → Quit).
2. Copy the entire %APPDATA%\Edge-Drop folder to your backup location.
3. Restart Edge-Drop.

To restore:

1. Quit Edge-Drop.
2. Copy the backup folder back to %APPDATA%\Edge-Drop.
3. Restart Edge-Drop.

Because the history is encrypted via DPAPI bound to the user account, restoring to the same user on the same machine works. Restoring to a different user account or a different machine will not decrypt; the index will appear corrupted and Edge-Drop will typically discard it.

This means there is no portable way to move Edge-Drop history between machines. A user migrating to a new PC needs to start fresh; pinned items need to be re-copied manually. This is the trade-off of DPAPI-based encryption: it protects confidentiality at the cost of portability. For the broader context, see remote work: clipboard across home and office PCs.

Multiple Windows users

Each Windows user has their own %APPDATA%, so each user gets their own Edge-Drop data folder. There is no shared history, no shared settings, no shared pins. If two users share a PC, they each see only their own history.

This is the correct behaviour for a local-first clipboard tool. See clipboard history on a shared family PC for the broader shared-PC considerations.

Failure modes

• %APPDATA% redirected to a network share — in some corporate environments, %APPDATA% is redirected to a network share via Folder Redirection. Edge-Drop will work, but file I/O may be slower, and the DPAPI-encrypted files may not decrypt correctly if the network share does not preserve the user's Windows credentials. This is a known DPAPI limitation.
• Antivirus locking the files — some antivirus products scan newly written files in %APPDATA%. If the scan holds a lock, Edge-Drop may fail to write the next history item. Whitelisting the Edge-Drop data folder resolves it.
• Disk full — if the disk is full, Edge-Drop cannot write new payloads. It will typically log the error and skip the capture; the user should see no item appear on the shelf for that copy.
• Corrupted index — if Edge-Drop is killed mid-write (e.g., power loss), the index file may be corrupted. On next launch, Edge-Drop typically detects this and discards the corrupted index, starting fresh. Pinned items may be lost.

What Edge-Drop does not claim

• Edge-Drop does not write to the registry for history or settings. Settings are in config.json; history is on disk. The only registry entry is the optional launch-at-login key. See how to launch Edge-Drop at login.
• Edge-Drop does not phone home with usage data. There is no telemetry about which items were captured, which apps were the source, or which features were used. See how to audit whether a clipboard app talks to the network for the broader topic.
• Edge-Drop does not store a copy of file items. A file item in history is a reference (path), not a copy. The file itself lives wherever the user put it; if the file is moved or deleted, the history entry breaks. See broken paths when a saved file clip points at nothing.
• Edge-Drop does not provide a "export history" feature. Users who want to extract specific items need to copy them out manually.

Summary

Edge-Drop stores its data under %APPDATA%\Edge-Drop, with history in an encrypted index, large payloads offloaded to a payloads\ directory, settings in a plain JSON config, and thumbnails in a cache. History and payloads are encrypted at rest via Windows DPAPI bound to the user account; settings, logs, and thumbnails are plain. To back up, copy the whole folder while Edge-Drop is quit; to wipe, delete it. For pre-sale disk hygiene, pair the folder deletion with a full-disk wipe; for routine privacy, rely on auto-delete and clear-on-restart.

Related reading

• How to Launch Edge-Drop at Login
• How to Use the Preview Flyout
• How to Install Edge-Drop on Windows 10 and 11
• What Local-First Software Means for Clipboard Apps

Sources

• Microsoft Learn — Data Protection API (DPAPI) — official documentation for the encryption Edge-Drop uses for history and payloads
• Electron — safeStorage API — the Electron API Edge-Drop uses to wrap DPAPI on Windows
• Microsoft Learn — Known folders reference (APPDATA, LOCALAPPDATA) — documents the per-user application data layout Edge-Drop writes to
• Microsoft Learn — Folder Redirection — explains the corporate environment scenario where %APPDATA% is on a network share, which can affect DPAPI decryption
• Microsoft Learn — BitLocker overview — the full-disk encryption solution that complements Edge-Drop's per-file encryption

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