this post was submitted on 15 May 2026
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How though? A website cannot just access your hard drive and write stuff, as far as I know.
There’s a file api you can use to interact with the file system directly. Practically, I’m not sure how much it would help, since you could only access it with permission while the website is open, and there’s no way to sync between devices, but it is hypothetically possible to write a feature that backs up your settings periodically.
Actually it can. Cookies, local storage … but using that for backups would certainly be an idea I haven't heard before.
Plus it’s going to be a lot lire work to extract that when the website that wrote to it is no longer accessible. Easier to just click the backup button and download a file.
Mine is a 200kB text file (I imagine much smaller if compressed into e.g. a zip file), so it could just be attached in an e-mail 🤔
How about a desktop client?
Wait, doesn't every website do this? Or are there websites that only live in RAM?
No websites should be able to access anything on your hard drive arbitrarily.
Websites can ask the browser to store something in cookies, or local db storage; it can even say “here’s a file for download”. But it cannot just decide to place a download somewhere in your filesystem.
The browser itself is accessing your filesystem to read and write cookies, cache, etc. and the website has (rightfully so) zero control over that, other than asking permission and offering up a link to something the browser may to may not decide what to do with.
Didn't claim arbitrary access, just writing to hard drive. But I see, so the browser is the mediating layer