Application data
Your settings, dictation history, debug logs and any saved audio:
Inside it:
Downloaded models
Local speech and AI models are downloaded on first use and cached outside the application-data folder, so you can reclaim the space without losing settings:
On Linux, an absolute
XDG_CACHE_HOME setting changes the model-cache location.
A configured OPENWHISPR_CACHE_ROOT can also override it. On Windows, paths
containing spaces or non-ASCII characters may cause models to use
%ProgramData%\OpenWhispr\cache or an OpenWhispr\cache folder on the system
drive instead. Other cached files can remain in the original cache folder.
Use Open under Model cache to find the model folder in use.
Whisper models sit in whisper-models/ inside it. Deleting anything here is
safe — the app re-downloads what it needs next time you select it.
You don’t have to do it by hand: Settings → System → Data
Management → Model cache has Open, which shows you the folder, and
Clear cache, which removes downloaded speech and AI models.
Reset app data in the same section is the
bigger hammer — it deletes local settings, transcriptions, recordings and
models together, then restarts the app so it comes back with a clean database.
On Windows the uninstaller clears this folder for you. On Linux, .deb and
.rpm packages do the same on removal; AppImage and tar.gz don’t, because
there’s no uninstaller to run.
Note files, if you turned them on
Save notes as files (under Settings → Preferences under App) mirrors your notes as Markdown. It’s off until you turn it on. The default location isnotes/ inside the application-data folder; you can choose a
different folder, dedicated to OpenWhispr’s note files.
That folder is also the Obsidian answer: point it at a vault and your notes
appear there as ordinary Markdown. Export your
notes covers the detail.
Credentials
API keys and enterprise credentials aren’t in either folder. They go to the operating system’s own credential store — Keychain on macOS, DPAPI on Windows, libsecret on Linux — and are never sent to us. How OpenWhispr is secured explains the one Linux caveat worth knowing on managed fleets.Backing up
To back up your local settings, history and notes, copy the application-data folder while OpenWhispr is closed. Copyingtranscriptions.db while the app is
running can catch it mid-write. If you keep mirrored note files in a separate
folder, back up that folder too.
The models cache isn’t worth backing up — it re-downloads.