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Where Vesari Stylus keeps your files and settings
Two separate things live in two separate places. Your music stays wherever you already keep it, and Vesari Stylus only reads it. Everything the app makes for itself, the library, settings, caches and logs, lives in a folder of its own.
Your music stays where you put it
When you add a folder, Vesari walks through it and records what it found: file paths, tags, durations, artwork. That is a read: it does not copy your files into a library of its own, rename them, or reorganise your folders. Point it at a drive full of albums and, with the one exception below, it looks the same afterwards. See Add your music (the first scan).
The things that do touch your files
Only one of these happens without you asking, and it can be undone. The rest are on request.
- Decoded leftovers get moved aside during a scan. If a
foo.dts.wavsits beside thefoo.dtsit was decoded from, the scan moves the.wavinto.aj-quarantine\wav-leftoversin the same music folder, so it is not indexed twice. Nothing is deleted, and a standalone WAV with no source beside it is never touched. - Saving tags, by hand in the tag editor or automatically with Super-Tag, writes the new tags into the audio file itself.
- Auto-calculate ReplayGain, which is off unless you switch it on, writes loudness tags into files after a scan.
- Import Music copies tracks from a drive you point it at into a library folder you choose, checks each copy against the original, and never writes to or deletes from the source.
- Moving duplicates aside in Library Health moves the extra copies into a
.aj-quarantinefolder inside your own music folder. Nothing is deleted, and that folder is not hidden: the dot in its name only keeps the scanner out. See Library Health & finding duplicates.
Vesari's own folder
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| The program itself | %LOCALAPPDATA%\Vesari Stylus |
| Library, settings, caches, logs | %APPDATA%\com.garyd.audiophile-player |
That second folder carries the app's internal identifier, which predates the Vesari Stylus name, so nothing there is called "Vesari Stylus". Paste the path into the File Explorer address bar, or open Settings, choose the Logs tab and click the Logs button: Explorer opens with logs picked out, and the data folder is the one holding it.
Inside it you will find:
library.dbis the library itself: every track found and where it sits, your playlists, play history, star ratings, cached album artwork, and the ledger for quarantined duplicates.config.jsonholds your settings. If its contents ever go corrupt, Vesari renames it toconfig.json.corruptand starts from defaults, so a damaged file never silently erases what you set.- Artwork caches hold covers and artist images fetched online, and rebuild themselves.
- Licence and trial files, plus an identifier for this machine. See Activating your licence.
- A self-signed certificate, generated on first run, for streaming to your phone.
API keys live in Windows Credential Manager
The keys and passwords under Settings live in Windows Credential Manager, not in config.json. That covers the ones you type in, the AcoustID Application Key, Discogs Token and Last.fm API Key, and the two the app creates and shows you for copying, the API Bearer Token and the OpenSubsonic Password.
An older build kept the AcoustID key in the config file. Current builds move it once at startup, into Credential Manager and out of the file, so a copy of config.json never carries a key with it. Moving your settings to another PC means entering the keys again there.
What a reinstall touches
Running the installer again replaces the program folder and leaves the data folder alone, so your library, playlists, history, ratings, settings and licence come back exactly as they were. You do not need to uninstall first, and automatic updates work the same way.
What removing all app data would destroy
If you uninstall and let it remove the app's data, or delete the data folder yourself:
- Your music is untouched. Every audio file stays where it is.
- The library database goes, and with it your playlists, play history, star ratings and the scan record. A fresh scan rebuilds the track list, nothing else.
- Settings and caches go, and rebuild as you use the app again.
- Quarantined duplicates become stranded. They are still on disk in
.aj-quarantine, but the ledger saying where each came from lived in the database, so the app cannot put them back. Restore anything you want first. - Your licence file goes, and you activate again with your key.
- Your trial does not restart. Its start date is anchored in more than one place, and our server holds the authoritative record. See Your free trial.
Whatever state your licence ends up in, your library still plays. There is no mode in which Vesari Stylus stops playing your music. See Free, Pro & Lifetime.
Where to find logs
Settings has a Logs tab showing entries as they happen, with filters, a search box, a button that opens the folder and a Clear button for the list. A fresh set of files is written each day and cleaned up automatically after 30 days.
You rarely need to open them: the Report a Bug form attaches the recent ones when you submit, and they include file paths from your library. See Is this a bug? How to report it.