Open a security advisory. Please do not open a public issue for something exploitable.
Radiowriter runs on your computer and serves a page to your own browser on
localhost. There is no account, no server of ours, and nothing is uploaded
anywhere.
Everything lives in one SQLite file in your user data folder — run
radiowriter --where to see the exact path.
| macOS | ~/Library/Application Support/Radiowriter |
| Linux | ~/.local/share/radiowriter (or $XDG_DATA_HOME) |
| Windows | %LOCALAPPDATA%\Radiowriter |
The file holds the articles you saved, your reading lists, your drafts, and your settings — including the email address and any API keys you entered. It is not encrypted. Anyone with access to your user account can read it.
Only what a search needs, and only to these four:
| Service | What it is sent | Why |
|---|---|---|
| NCBI E-utilities | your query, your email, your API key if set | to search and fetch records |
| Unpaywall | a DOI, your email | to find a legal free copy |
| Semantic Scholar | PMIDs, your API key if set | citation counts |
| radiopaedia.work/cite | an identifier you cite | to resolve a citation |
The email is not authentication: both NCBI and Unpaywall require a contact address in every request so they can warn a caller whose script misbehaves instead of silently blocking it. Neither sends mail.
LibKey links are built locally and only opened when you click them.
⇅ Export and backup writes two kinds of file:
.nbib— the articles in MEDLINE format. Note that PubMed's own affiliation lines often contain the corresponding author's email address, so an export of a large archive contains hundreds of third-party addresses. They are public in PubMed, but think before republishing the file..json— the whole archive. Settings are deliberately left out, so a backup you share does not carry your email or your keys.
The database file itself does carry your settings. If you want to hand your
archive to someone, use the .json backup rather than copying the .db.