locallens@community:~$ cat stats.md
LocalLens by the numbers
Live numbers for LocalLens, the offline photo organizer: GitHub stars and forks, release downloads and visits to this site. They refresh every few minutes, and the same data is available as JSON at /api/stats.
How many people use LocalLens?
Nobody knows exactly, including us, because the app sends no telemetry. The closest honest number is how many times the release files have been downloaded, shown below next to the GitHub and site numbers.
—stars
—forks
—open issuespull requests included
—downloadsinstallers and updates, all releases
—visitsunique visitors per day
Where do these numbers come from?
- Stars, forks and open issues come from the GitHub API for ashesbloom/LocalLens. GitHub counts open pull requests as issues too.
- Downloads add up the download counter GitHub keeps for each installer on every release: the macOS DMG and update archive, and the Windows
.exeand.msi. Updates count as downloads. Thelatest.jsonfile the app fetches on each update check is left out, because counting it would turn update checks into downloads. - Visits are unique visitors per day to this site, counted from a salted hash, never a stored address. More on that.
Why is there no user count?
Counting users would need the app to report home, and LocalLens does not, not even anonymously or as an opt-in. That is a deliberate choice: the claim that the app sends nothing anywhere is only worth something if it stays true.
Every privacy claim, with the command that lets you check it yourself.