Data locations and portable mode

A scan only reads the disk. What SpaceKnife keeps lives in a few per-user folders, or, for a portable copy, in the data folder next to the program.

Where things are

	Windows	Linux	macOS
Data: snapshots, tags, logs	%LOCALAPPDATA%\SpaceKnife	~/.local/share/SpaceKnife	~/Library/Application Support/SpaceKnife
Configuration: settings, file classes	%LOCALAPPDATA%\SpaceKnife	~/.config/SpaceKnife	~/Library/Application Support/SpaceKnife
Cache	%LOCALAPPDATA%\SpaceKnife\Cache	~/.cache/SpaceKnife	~/Library/Caches/SpaceKnife
Interface profile (the window’s storage and caches)	%APPDATA%\SpaceKnife\electron	~/.config/SpaceKnife/electron	~/Library/Application Support/SpaceKnife/electron

On Linux, the folders follow XDG_DATA_HOME, XDG_CONFIG_HOME and XDG_CACHE_HOME when you set them.

You don’t have to look them up: Settings › Advanced shows them.

• Files & diagnostics: Settings file and Log folder, each with Open.
• Scan helper & cache: Snapshots (count, total size and folder, with Open) and Cache (size and folder, with Clear cache…; cache in use is kept).
• Open settings file at the bottom of the settings list, and Open snapshot folder in the … menu of Recent on the start page.

What is in them

File or folder	In	What it holds
snapshots/	data	One folder per scanned location, one .sks file per snapshot
tags/	data	Saved tags, one file per scanned location
logs/spaceknife.log	data	The log file
update.json	data	The last update check, the recent releases with their notes, and the versions whose update card you closed
updates/	data	A downloaded new version until it runs, and while a portable copy is replaced, its new and old program files. Emptied at the next start (Nothing left behind)
palette_recent.json	data	Recent jumps and filters of the command palette
settings.json	configuration	Your settings
classes.json	configuration	Your file classes
columns/	cache	Scan data moved out of memory for very large scans

SpaceKnife’s own folders, like the folder it is installed in, are protected: you can’t delete or move them from inside SpaceKnife.

Snapshots

Automatic snapshots are saved as snapshots/<location>-<id>/<date>-<time>.sks, for example snapshots/Videos-3f2a9c41d0be/20261020-081530.sks. The date and time are in UTC.

For each location SpaceKnife keeps the newest 10 (Settings › Advanced › Recent snapshots to keep, 1–100), and of the older ones the newest of each week; the rest are deleted after each automatic save.

Keep a snapshot for good

Files whose names aren’t a date and time are never deleted by that cleanup: rename a snapshot in its folder (say, before-cleanup.sks) to keep it. A renamed file still counts toward the newest 10. Or copy it anywhere else and open it later with Open snapshot file….

Settings

settings.json holds your settings. You can edit it by hand while SpaceKnife runs: it checks the file every second and applies your change. If the file isn’t valid, SpaceKnife says so at the top of the settings page and keeps the last valid settings. To move settings between computers, use Settings › Advanced › Export settings and Import settings: the import lists what would change and applies nothing until you confirm. See Settings.

Logs

logs/spaceknife.log grows to 10 MB, then starts a new file; the 5 newest old files are kept. Settings › Advanced › Log file level chooses Info or Debug. The log panel (Ctrl+J) shows the events of this session.

For a bug report, Settings › Advanced › Copy diagnostics puts the versions, platform, capabilities and the paths of the settings file and log folder on the clipboard. Nothing is sent anywhere.

Cache

When a scan’s data grows past Settings › Advanced › Scan data memory limit (25% of physical memory by default), new parts of it go to memory-mapped files in the cache instead of private memory. These files remove themselves when they are no longer needed, and anything a crash leaves behind is removed at the next start. Clear cache… removes what isn’t in use.

SPACEKNIFE_HOME

Set the environment variable SPACEKNIFE_HOME to a folder, and SpaceKnife keeps everything there instead of the per-user folders:

Folder	Holds
SPACEKNIFE_HOME/data	Snapshots, tags, logs, update state
SPACEKNIFE_HOME/config	Settings, file classes
SPACEKNIFE_HOME/cache	Cache
SPACEKNIFE_HOME/electron	Interface profile

Use it for a separate profile (to try settings without touching your own), to keep snapshots on another drive, or for demos and tests. Give an absolute path.

Windows, for one start from PowerShell:

$env:SPACEKNIFE_HOME = "D:\SpaceKnife-data"
& "<install folder>\SpaceKnife.exe"

Windows, for every program started afterwards (to undo it, delete the variable in the Windows environment variable settings):

setx SPACEKNIFE_HOME "D:\SpaceKnife-data"

Linux:

SPACEKNIFE_HOME=/home/lenny/spaceknife-data spaceknife

macOS:

SPACEKNIFE_HOME=/Users/lenny/spaceknife-data /Applications/SpaceKnife.app/Contents/MacOS/SpaceKnife

The command line reads the same variable, so spaceknife-backend snapshot list with SPACEKNIFE_HOME set lists the snapshots in that folder.

Portable mode

The portable archives (SpaceKnife-<version>-win-x64-portable.zip and SpaceKnife-<version>-linux-x64-portable.tar.gz) have an empty data folder next to the program, with a short README in it. Each time SpaceKnife starts on Windows or Linux, it looks for that folder: if there is a data folder next to the executable, it is used exactly like SPACEKNIFE_HOME. Snapshots, settings, logs, cache and the interface profile all stay in it, and nothing is written to your user profile.

• An explicitly set SPACEKNIFE_HOME wins over the data folder.
• Delete or rename data and the copy uses the normal per-user folders. Put it back and it is portable again.
• Unpack the archive somewhere you can write: a folder under Program Files, for example, doesn’t work.
• The in-app update knows it is a portable copy: it downloads the portable archive, and Seamless update replaces the program files and keeps data; Replace it yourself shows the archive so that you unpack it over the old files (see Upgrading).
• The macOS app and the AppImage have no portable mode. On macOS, use SPACEKNIFE_HOME instead.

The command line and portable mode

Only the app looks for the data folder; the command line inside a portable copy doesn’t. To work with a portable copy’s snapshots from a terminal, point SPACEKNIFE_HOME at its data folder, as in the example below.

$env:SPACEKNIFE_HOME = "C:\Users\lenny\Apps\SpaceKnife-portable\data"
& "C:\Users\lenny\Apps\SpaceKnife-portable\resources\backend\spaceknife-backend.exe" snapshot list

Moving your data

To take your settings into a portable copy (or out of one), export them in one copy and import them in the other (Settings › Advanced › Export settings / Import settings). Snapshots are plain files: copy the .sks files you want and open them with Open snapshot file…, or quit SpaceKnife and copy the whole snapshots folder into the other copy’s data folder (data/data/snapshots in a portable copy).

Removing all data

The Windows uninstaller does it for you: tick Also delete the snapshots, settings and logs on its second page (Uninstalling). Otherwise, to start fresh or to remove everything after uninstalling, quit SpaceKnife and delete the folders in the first table (on Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\SpaceKnife and %APPDATA%\SpaceKnife), or the SPACEKNIFE_HOME folder or data folder you use. Settings › Advanced › Restore all defaults resets only the settings and file classes.