Where SuperCapture stores captures, sidecars and app data

SuperCapture keeps your data in two places on your Mac:

The save folder holds your media and the metadata that goes with it.
The app data folder holds settings, the gallery index and caches.

At a glance

What	Where
Captures, recordings and imports	`~/Pictures/SuperCapture` (change in Settings → General → Save Location)
Annotations, layers, edits, thumbnails	`.supercapture/` inside the save folder
Gallery index	`~/Library/Application Support/SuperCapture/supercapture.db`
Settings	`~/Library/Application Support/SuperCapture/settings.json`
Workflows	`~/Library/Application Support/SuperCapture/workflows.json`

~/Pictures/SuperCapture is the default for new installs. If you’ve changed the save folder, the rest of this page applies to your folder instead.

The save folder

Media files sit in the save folder and in any folders you create inside it. Imported fonts go under fonts/{Family}/.

Everything the app knows about those files lives in one hidden .supercapture/ directory at the top of the save folder:

~/Pictures/SuperCapture/
├── 2026-08-02 14-32-10 SuperCapture.png
├── Design/
│   └── Logo.png
└── .supercapture/
    ├── collections.json
    ├── linked-directories.json
    ├── image/
    │   ├── 2026-08-02 14-32-10 SuperCapture.png.image/
    │   └── Design/
    │       └── Logo.png.image/
    ├── video/   {folder}/{file}.video/
    ├── audio/   {folder}/{file}.audio/
    ├── pdf/     {folder}/{file}.pdf/
    ├── font/    {folder}/{file}.font/
    └── {type}/_ext_{hash}/   linked-folder items

Each item’s sidecar folder is named after the media file’s full name, extension included, so X.png and X.jpg don’t collide. Its path copies the media file’s subfolder. When you move an item in the gallery, the sidecar moves with it.

Inside a sidecar folder

File	Kind	Holds
`metadata.json`	Authoritative	Image layers and capture context
`manifest.json`	Authoritative	Video and audio trims, crops, camera and mix
`layers/*.bin`	Authoritative	Pixel data for bitmap layers
`identity.json`	Authoritative	The item’s stable ID, used by sync and rebuilds
`state.json`	Authoritative copy	Tags, collections, hidden and trashed state, mirrored from the index
`thumbnail.jpg`, `thumbnail-sm.jpg`, `thumbnail-md.jpg`, `thumbnail-crop.jpg`	Derived	Gallery thumbnails

Derived files are regenerated when needed, so deleting them is safe. At the sidecar root, collections.json records your collections and linked-directories.json records your linked folders.

The app data folder

~/Library/Application Support/SuperCapture holds data that shouldn’t sit in a synced or user-facing folder:

File or folder	Holds
`supercapture.db`	The gallery index: search text, tags, collections, sync state
`supercapture.db.pre-v{version}.bak`	A backup taken before a database upgrade
`settings.json`	All settings, including the save folder, hotkeys and naming template
`workflows.json`	Post-capture workflows
`editor-presets.json`, `image-editor-presets.json`	Video and image editor presets
`_custom-gradients.json`, `_custom-meshes.json`	Your custom gradient and mesh backgrounds
`_quick-fills.json`	Your shortlist of background fills
`models/`	Downloaded models, such as the speech transcription model
`wallpapers/`	Wallpaper images you’ve imported as backgrounds
`filmstrip-cache/`, `waveform-cache/`	Video filmstrip and audio waveform caches
`errors.log`, `crash.log`	Diagnostic logs