Where credentials live

Your project data lives in your SolarLayout account on the cloud. The desktop install carries just enough to keep you signed in and remember your preferences. Knowing what's where matters when you sign out, switch devices, or delete your account.

What lives on your computer

The desktop install carries a small footprint:

• Your sign-in — a small file in your OS configuration directory that remembers you between launches so you don't sign in every time you open the app:

  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/SolarLayout/credentials
  • Windows: %APPDATA%\SolarLayout\credentials
  • Linux: ~/.config/solarlayout/credentials

  File permissions are restricted to your user account (0600 on Unix; the standard %APPDATA% ACL on Windows). The authoritative record of your sign-in lives on the cloud — the desktop just keeps a token that proves it has signed in. If the cloud revokes the sign-in (you signed out on another device, or support invalidated the session), the next request the desktop makes will be rejected and the app asks you to sign in again.

• UI preferences — light or dark theme, layer visibility, recent tab state. Stored locally so the app opens the way you left it.

• Cached map imagery — for the canvas to render satellite background without re-downloading.

There's no local "project folder." Your projects, their KMZs, their layouts, and their exports all live in your SolarLayout account in the cloud — same data, same set, whichever machine you sign in from.

What's stored in the cloud

On solarlayout.app and api.solarlayout.app:

• Your account identity — email, name, and password (or the Google sign-in you connected, if you used Continue with Google).
• Your sign-in history — which devices have signed in recently, so you can revoke a device's access if it's lost or stolen.
• Billing history — payment records, invoices, transaction state.
• Calc balance — the authoritative count of remaining calcs. The desktop app reads this on launch and after each Generate.
• Project metadata, layouts, and exports — when you create a project, the KMZ is uploaded to cloud storage. Each layout you generate produces results (layout JSON, energy CSVs, exported PDFs / KMZ / DXF) that are written to cloud storage and listed against your project. This is how the same account works from another device.

In short: the inputs and outputs of a layout — your KMZ, the generated results, the exports — live in the cloud, owned by your account. The app's local state (your sign-in, UI preferences, cached basemap tiles) lives on disk.

Switching devices

Project data lives in the cloud, so switching devices is straightforward:

1. Install SolarLayout on the new machine.
2. Sign in with the same account.
3. Your projects, layouts, and exports are visible from solarlayout.app (and from the desktop app's Recents panel as that surface fills out).
4. Your remaining-calc balance is the same — it's a single number on your account, shared across every device.

Signing out

Use the top-right user menu in the desktop app:

• Sign out removes the locally stored sign-in from this machine. The next launch shows the welcome screen again.
• Signing out does not delete anything in the cloud — your projects, layouts, exports, balance, and account are untouched. Sign back in with the same account to restore access.
• Signing out does not delete any files you've already exported — PDFs, KMZs, DXFs, or CSVs you've downloaded stay in your Downloads folder (or wherever you saved them) and are yours to manage.

Deleting your account

If you want to fully delete your SolarLayout account:

1. Export anything you want to keep first. Once the account is deleted, support can't restore it. Use PDF, KMZ, DXF, or CSV to preserve your layouts.
2. Email support to request account deletion. We process deletion requests under the relevant regulation that applies to you — DPDP Act for Indian users, GDPR for European users, equivalent regional rights elsewhere. Include the email address registered on your account.

Account deletion removes:

• Your email, name, and password / connected sign-in.
• Your sign-in history.
• Your project metadata, layouts, and exports stored in the cloud.
• Your billing identifiers, subject to legal retention requirements — invoices may be retained for tax purposes.

It does not delete any KMZs or exports you've already downloaded to your computer — those are local copies in your Downloads folder (or wherever you saved them) and are yours to manage. Delete them manually if you also want them gone.

Privacy posture

SolarLayout's design intent: your project data — KMZs, layouts, exports, account records — lives in your account on the cloud so you can sign in from any machine and pick up where you left off. The desktop install only carries your sign-in, your UI preferences, and cached map tiles. We don't share project data with third parties beyond the payment processor essential to running the service.