Privacy

Last updated 2026-09-30

What comic-dl stores on your machine, what it sends over the network, and how to delete it.

This page describes what comic-dl stores on your machine and what it sends over the network. Everything below is implemented today; if you do not see a feature in this list, comic-dl does not do it.

Config file

comic-dl reads options from a TOML config file (config_path()):

Override the location with --config <PATH> or $COMIC_DL_CONFIG; skip it for one run with --no-config.

Cookie jar (cookies.db)

Session cookies collected while downloading are kept in a SQLite database at the per-platform config directory (same locations as above, cookies.db in place of config.toml), with WAL mode and owner-only (0600) permissions. Each row stores the host, path, name, expiry, and the cookie value. Cookie values are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM when a key source is available (see Cookies & Anti-Bot Handling); if no key source exists, comic-dl warns once and stores values in plaintext.

Note: values are credentials if a site treats them as such. Do not share cookies.db, back it up to shared storage, or leave it world-readable.

• Cookies with an unexpired expiry imported from an HTTP session are persisted; cookies without an expiry stay in memory for that process, and explicit stores through comic-dl cookie set write to disk even without an expiry.
• Inspect: comic-dl cookie ls [HOST]. Clear: comic-dl cookie clear [HOST].

Scrape cache

Metadata GETs are cached on disk under the per-platform cache directory (cache_dir(), e.g. ~/.cache/comic-dl/http on Linux). A cache entry is the URL and a hashed response body. Clear/prune with comic-dl cache clear|prune; the directory can be deleted outright.

Library history

Downloaded series are tracked in a single SQLite database at the per-platform data directory (~/.local/share/comic-dl/library.db on Linux, ~/Library/Application Support/comic-dl/library.db on macOS, %LOCALAPPDATA%\comic-dl\library.db on Windows; override with $COMIC_DL_DATA_DIR). It records the series source URL, per-chapter identity and counts, total size, and last-checked/-updated timestamps. Delete series with comic-dl remove|restore (see Library Management).

Logs

-vvv (or --debug-file <PATH>) prints the request/response diary. It may include URLs and response headers but never cookie values.

Outbound network

On normal runs comic-dl contacts only the target sites you asked it to download from (and the CDNs those sites reference for images). Additional network calls are limited to:

• the GitHub API for self update and site check version lookups;
• PyPI during install-time dependency resolution.

There is no telemetry, no analytics, and no phone-home on normal runs.

Third parties

The only third parties involved are the target sites themselves, and each receives only its own cookies. comic-dl does not send your cookie jar or download history anywhere.

Data deletion

There is no account to delete. Removing the data is removing the files:

• config: the config.toml above;
• cookies: cookies.db (and its WAL sidecars: cookies.db-wal, cookies.db-shm) or comic-dl cookie clear;
• cache: the cache directory or comic-dl cache clear;
• library: library.db in the data directory above, or comic-dl remove <series> per series.

See also Legal for the terms under which content may be downloaded.