How your account sign-ins are stored

Every account you connect is stored on this Mac and nowhere else. Storage Studio doesn't send your cloud passwords, keys or sign-ins to our servers, and they're left out of the diagnostic logs you can share with support. The page your browser shows after a sign-in says the same: This connection is stored on your Mac only.

Accounts you sign in to through the browser

For Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive and Box, you type your password on the provider's own page, never into Storage Studio. What Storage Studio receives is a permission from the provider that lets it reach your files. That permission is saved in the connection settings on this Mac. Those settings are marked so that Time Machine and other backups leave them out, which stops your sign-ins being copied onto a backup drive.

While an account is being added, the permission never appears on screen or in the app's logs — the sign-in window shows a line saying it was received and hidden.

Passwords and secret keys

For Bucket Storage, SFTP and FTP accounts, you do type a secret into Storage Studio. Those secrets are kept in an encrypted store on this Mac:

• it's locked to this Mac — a copy of the file taken to another Mac can't be opened;
• it's kept apart from Storage Studio's other settings, so the copies Storage Studio makes of its own settings never include it;
• it's left out of Time Machine and other backups.

The connection settings used for transfers also hold what each account needs to connect. That file isn't covered by Storage Studio's encryption — some values in it are only scrambled — so, as for everything else in your user account, your Mac's login password and FileVault are what protect it. Like the browser sign-ins, it's left out of backups.

For SFTP with a private key, the key file stays where it is on your Mac. Storage Studio remembers where it is and reads it when it connects; it doesn't copy or upload it.

For iCloud, your Apple ID password is saved, scrambled, in the same connection settings. Apple's verification codes are used once and not kept.

Account details

Things like each account's nickname, an S3 account's bucket name and the warnings you've accepted (such as the FTP warning) are not secrets, but they can still say a lot about you. They're encrypted on this Mac too — see your settings and sign-ins are encrypted on this Mac.

%% caption: Where each part of an account is kept
mindmap
  root((A connected account))
    Browser sign-in permission
      Connection settings on this Mac
      Left out of backups
    Passwords and secret keys
      Encrypted store locked to this Mac
      Left out of backups
    Nickname, bucket, accepted warnings
      Encrypted on this Mac
    Private key file
      Stays where you keep it
    Never sent to us
      Not in diagnostic logs either

When you remove an account

Remove deletes the account's connection from this Mac. It doesn't change anything in the cloud account itself, so if you want to withdraw Storage Studio's access completely, you can also do that in the provider's own account or security settings. See testing, editing and removing an account.

See also: Privacy: what stays on your Mac · What leaves your Mac, and when · Sharing diagnostic logs with support · Cloud accounts