Profiles - who you are when you create

A profile is the working identity Lolly creates as. It's the small set of details a tool can pull from so you don't retype them every time - your name, contact details, an optional headshot, a few preferences - plus everything you accumulate while you work: saved sessions, uploaded images and the local activity tally.

Everything in a profile lives on the device, in the browser's local database (IndexedDB on the web PWA, the filesystem on the Tauri apps). There's no account and nothing is uploaded. You manage it under Profile (top-right of the gallery); tools only ever read it, and only the specific fields they were built to pre-fill.

A profile is about you (or whoever's creating here). It's distinct from the Platform - the brand's colours, fonts and global settings - and from Capabilities, the catalogue of what the app can do. See Profile vs Platform vs Capabilities at the end.

What's in a profile

PartWhat it is
NameFirst and last name.
ContactEmail and phone.
LocationCity and country.
HeadshotAn optional photo, cropped to a square and kept as a local image. Used by tools like email signatures, quote cards, org charts and dynamic layouts.
Use my details to createA single opt-in switch (it reads Using my details once it's on). It controls whether your personal details ride along as provenance - the author/credit line embedded in exported files - and as the author on /pro batch runs. (It doesn't gate pre-fill: see How tools use your profile.)
PreferencesYour theme (Light, Dark or Brand - the brand theme paints the app in your own palette) and which parts of the app you've enabled via Feature flags.
AccessibilityFour comfort switches - Reduce motion, Hide colourful previews, High contrast, Large text - kept on the profile record, so they ride along in a profile export. See Accessibility.
Your workSaved sessions (with thumbnails) - organised into nested folders in Projects - your My images library and the local activity stats, all keyed to this profile.

None of this is required. A blank profile is a perfectly good profile; you fill in only what saves you typing.

The Profile screen - name, contact, an optional headshot and your preferencessigned by Lollyvector SVGCheck it yourselfGet the signed file116 paths~10k nodes186 groups142 KBThe Profile screen - name, contact, an optional headshot and your preferencessigned by Lollyvector SVGCheck it yourselfGet the signed file116 paths~10k nodes186 groups143 KB

Preferences are the one part that changes how the app looks back at you. The theme cards are live previews and apply the moment you pick one, on this device only.

The page is a long one, so it carries its own settings rail down the side - Your details, Appearance, Accessibility, Lolly instance, Your activity, Storage, Available offline, Feature flags, Content Credentials - with a Search settings field above it that filters the list as you type. Every section is deep-linkable as #/profile?focus=<section-id>, which opens it and scrolls it into view (#/profile?focus=storage-section, ?focus=feature-flags-section, and so on), so a link can point at one setting rather than at the top of the page.

Three theme cards, each previewing its own type and colour, with the active one flaggedsigned by Lollyvector SVGCheck it yourselfGet the signed file2 paths179 nodes5 groups5 KBThree theme cards, each previewing its own type and colour, with the active one flaggedsigned by Lollyvector SVGCheck it yourselfGet the signed file2 paths179 nodes5 groups5 KB

A profile is a context, not just a person

The word "profile" suggests one fixed person, but in Lolly it's really a creating context - who you are while you make this thing. That context can be three different shapes, and Lolly handles all of them the same way.

As an individual

The default. The profile is you: your name, your email, your headshot. Set it once and your signature, your badge, your conference lockup all fill themselves in. This is what most people will ever need.

The headshot control, empty until you upload a photo that then stays on this devicesigned by Lollyvector SVGCheck it yourselfGet the signed file3 paths429 nodes14 groups9 KBThe headshot control, empty until you upload a photo that then stays on this devicesigned by Lollyvector SVGCheck it yourselfGet the signed file3 paths429 nodes14 groups9 KB

As a team

A profile doesn't have to be a single human. It can stand in for a team or function within an org: the team's shared name, a group inbox address (events@…), a department, the team's headshot or unit mark. One person sets it up, exports it (see below) and the rest of the team loads the same profile - so everything the team produces carries consistent details without anyone re-entering them. A shared kiosk or a checked-out demo laptop can run a single team profile that everyone behind it creates as.

As a function - a role you wear sometimes

This is the case the rigid "one person, one profile" model misses. You might be an event manager three days a year and something else entirely the rest of the time. Those three days you want event details, the event inbox, maybe an event sub-brand to fill in your badges and signage; the other 362 you want your normal identity back.

In Lolly, that role is just another profile you keep on hand - a saved bundle (next section) you load for the event and set aside afterwards. The role is a hat, not a new account. Wear it when you need it, take it off when you're done.

One install, one active profile - many you can keep

At any moment an install has one active profile - the details a tool sees right now. There's no in-app profile switcher; instead, each profile is a portable bundle (a single .zip, see below). That's deliberately the same mechanism as moving to a new device - a profile is a file you can save, copy and load.

So if you genuinely juggle several contexts (you, your team, the event-manager hat), you keep several bundles and load the one you need:

Storage is where both halves of that live: the meter accounts for every byte this install is holding, category by category, and the buttons under it are how you clear or carry it.

The storage meter, breaking down saved sessions, images and cache against what the browser actually reportssigned by Lollyvector SVGCheck it yourselfGet the signed file23 paths~4.4k nodes44 groups55 KBThe storage meter, breaking down saved sessions, images and cache against what the browser actually reportssigned by Lollyvector SVGCheck it yourselfGet the signed file23 paths~4.4k nodes44 groups55 KB

Keep a bundle per context and rename the files for what they are (LollyTools-events-2026.zip, LollyTools-me.zip). The file is the profile.

Accessibility

Profile → Accessibility holds four comfort settings for the app around your work. Each is off until you turn it on, and none of them reach inside a tool canvas or an export - a calmer app must not move a pixel of the file you ship.

These live on the profile record itself, which is why they travel in a profile export and land on the next install alongside your name and your sessions. (The device also keeps a small local mirror so the setting applies before the first paint; that mirror is device-only and doesn't travel.)

Your Lolly instance

Profile → Lolly instance says where this install gets its tools and catalogue from - the address of the instance, or Bundled with this app when everything ships inside the build. Where a deployment offers one, an Instance console link opens its admin surface, and Change / Disconnect re-point the install or cut it loose.

Re-pointing at another instance needs the desktop app: a browser blocks a page from loading tools and assets across origins, so on the web the section reports where you are and leaves it there.

Available offline

Lolly caches as you go, but caching-as-you-go only covers where you've already been. Profile → Available offline is for the trip you can see coming: an hour on airport wifi before a flight with none. Download the parts you'll need, watch one progress bar, and everything you took keeps working with the connection gone.

Seven parts, each with its size stated before you commit:

The last four are marked large download, and they are deliberately individual opt-ins: Download everything at the top takes the app, the catalogue scope you chose, the docs and all tools in one pass and nothing else. Speech voices, the upscalers, background removal and the deep scan each download only when you ask for that row by name - a few hundred megabytes hiding inside one button would be dishonest.

Below the parts sits the per-tool list: each tool downloads individually (the tick means ready offline), or Download all sweeps the lot. Downloads are resumable - cancel or lose the connection and the next run picks up where it stopped, fetching only what's missing - and they refresh themselves when you're back online, pulling just what a new release changed.

If the browser hasn't granted persistent storage, the section says so and offers Protect downloads, which asks for it - the difference between "downloaded" and "downloaded until the browser wants the space back".

Moving a profile to a new device

Because a profile is entirely local, the only way to get it onto a blank install - a new laptop, a freshly reset browser, a colleague's machine, an offline box - is to carry the file. No login restores it for you, and that's the point: nothing ever left your device to begin with.

Under Profile → Storage → Move to another device:

The two buttons that move a whole install: Export my data writes one zip, Import data reads it backsigned by Lollyvector SVGCheck it yourselfGet the signed file12 paths~5.1k nodes12 groups60 KBThe two buttons that move a whole install: Export my data writes one zip, Import data reads it backsigned by Lollyvector SVGCheck it yourselfGet the signed file12 paths~5.1k nodes12 groups60 KB

The bundle is a plain, self-contained zip, so it travels by any means - USB, AirDrop, a network share, email-to-yourself - and the target can be completely offline. Each part is checksummed, so a file damaged in transit is caught on import rather than restored half-broken. Import merges (same-named profile/session/image is overwritten; everything else is kept), so it never wipes a target that was already in use.

What doesn't travel: the catalogue cache (it re-downloads itself on the new device) and the tools themselves (assumed already present).

For the exact bundle layout, version policy and integrity rules, see Data Transfer; for the end-to-end walkthrough, Using Lolly → Moving to another device.

How tools use your profile

A tool only ever pre-fills the profile fields it was explicitly built to bind:

Explicit binding. A tool author marks an input as drawing from the profile (bindToProfile: "firstname", "email", "headshot", …). When the tool opens, that input pre-fills from your profile - and you can still override it for that one session without changing the profile. Pre-fill is a local convenience and happens whether or not Use my details is on.

The opt-in (provenance). When you export an asset, your details optionally ride along as provenance - an author/credit line embedded in the file's metadata (PNG, PDF, SVG, …) - so a finished asset can say who made it. This is what Use my details to create governs: leave it off and the export still carries the "Made with Lolly" tool/platform attribution, but no personal author/contact line is embedded. (The same opt-in sets the author on /pro batch runs.) (Tool authors: see Authoring Tools → bindToProfile and Host API → host.profile.)

The single Use my details to create switch, sitting beside Save Profile and off until you turn it onsigned by Lollyvector SVGCheck it yourselfGet the signed file2 paths586 nodes5 groups9 KBThe single Use my details to create switch, sitting beside Save Profile and off until you turn it onsigned by Lollyvector SVGCheck it yourselfGet the signed file2 paths586 nodes5 groups10 KB

Profile vs Platform vs Capabilities

Three things sit near each other in the UI and are easy to confuse:

A profile changes who an asset is from; the platform changes what it looks like; capabilities are what you can make.

"Profile" means two other things elsewhere - not this one

The word is overloaded across the project. Neither of these is the personal profile this page is about:

The Verified identity card, phone-width: the certificate lifetime picker and the enrolment step beneath it - the identity profile, separate from your personal detailssigned by Lollyvector SVGCheck it yourselfGet the signed file21 paths~10k nodes16 groups112 KBThe Verified identity card, phone-width: the certificate lifetime picker and the enrolment step beneath it - the identity profile, separate from your personal detailssigned by Lollyvector SVGCheck it yourselfGet the signed file21 paths~10k nodes16 groups112 KB

Privacy

Outside the optional identity enrolment above (which sends the email you enrol to the certificate service - see Server Surface), a profile is never transmitted, uploaded or used to identify or track you - there's nothing to consent to, only this notice so you know what's kept. Wipe all of it at any time with Profile → Clear all my data. See the Privacy Policy.