Where and how are my Events saved?

Where are my Events saved?

All of your Events (recordings and notes) are stored locally on your device, and uploaded to Glean's cloud storage.

Saving when online

When you’re online, your Events are stored locally and continuously uploaded to Glean’s cloud storage in the background.

Any changes you make to your Events are synced to the cloud, so you can access the latest version of your Events from anywhere.

Saving when offline

When you’re offline, any changes you make are saved locally on your device.

Your changes (if any) will be synced to the cloud the next time your device connects to the internet. 

N.B. You need to have an internet connection and have Glean open for cloud sync to complete. 

Connectivity & cloud sync status

Glean displays information on your internet connectivity and cloud sync status.

You will see one of the following cloud sync status icons in Glean's header bar:

Upload Complete
All changes have been saved and synced to the cloud.

Upload in Progress
Cloud upload is currently in progress.

Offline
You are offline - your Events will be synced to the cloud when you next connect to the internet. 

Event sync status

Individual Events in Glean's Event Hub will also display a cloud icon if they have not yet been fully synced to the cloud. 

Events with no cloud symbol have been fully synced.

Here's what you'll see if you're offline and have un-synced Events:

Here's what you'll see if you're online, and cloud sync is in progress:

Top tips for ensuring your Events sync to the cloud

Glean has been designed to save your Events regardless of internet connectivity, but there are a few things we recommend you avoid doing to prevent any loss of data:

💻  Don't lose your device! Leave your laptop on the bus and any unsynced Events will be lost with it.

🙈  Don't use Glean in a private browsing mode (such as Incognito Mode in Chrome) - read more about why this is a big no no. 

🚯  Don't clear site data from your browser's settings until your Events have been synced to the cloud. Learn more.

Is there a limit to the number of Events I can store in the Glean cloud?

Is my data secure?

Data security is a priority for the Glean development team, and we regularly audit our systems to ensure your data remains safe.

Secure local storage:

Data saved locally is stored on your hard disk in a Glean-readable format.

Secure cloud storage:

Your data is uploaded to Glean's cloud storage, which is hosted across both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google cloud platforms in UK data centres.

Resilience to cyber attacks:

The Glean platform is penetration tested at least once per year by an independent third party provider. For more information please see https://glean.co/security

The really techy stuff:

All data is saved in IndexedDB (a database built into the browser) so that Glean can work offline. 

When online, the browser uploads the data to the cloud. Audio data is sent directly to AWS S3 servers and all other data (Event name, notes, audio visualization data) is sent to our database via our backend.

All data is uploaded using a secure connection (HTTPS).

Audio files are currently captured in chunks (we are referring to them as blobs - binary long objects) and encrypted as they are stored on S3. They are decrypted on retrieval and reassembled on the client's browser.

Communication between the browser and S3 (for upload and download) is done via presigned URLs. These URLs are only valid for the upload of a particular audio blob (they are only valid for a single destination address in S3) and are valid for a limited time.