Bug reports

What's in a report

A report can include the description you write, an optional email address, your app version and system details, the current session's recorded steps, the files the session took in (imported or opened files, and textures and library items you added), a file that failed to open, your model file, and a tail of the diagnostic log. Each of those is a separate checkbox in the dialog, on by default, with its size and a preview shown next to it. Untick anything before sending.

Recorded steps and the model file carry your model's geometry. Imported files are those original files byte for byte, such as a SketchUp .skp or a photo used as a texture. When a file won't open or import, the next report you make, including one from the crash screen, offers that file too, byte for byte and under its own name, ticked like the other rows, so the problem can be reproduced. Untick all of these to send only your description, system details, and log.

On the desktop app, every mention of your home folder in the log tail, a crash message, or the document name is replaced with~ before the preview is shown, so the preview is what gets sent. With Debug Mode on in Settings, one more row appears: the raw mouse and keyboard events of the session, off the list entirely otherwise.

Nothing leaves your machine until you click Send

Opening the dialog sends nothing by itself. Only clickingSend report submits it, compressed. A report over 1 GB after compression is sent without the model file, then without imported files, then without the file that didn't open; the dialog marks each one it leaves out, and the report says which. A file that didn't open and was left out still goes by name, size, and the error it failed with, never its contents.Save to file… writes everything you ticked to a file on your machine instead, and Cancel sends nothing at all.

Where it's stored

Reports are stored on Cloudflare, inside Hew's own account — not on a public bug tracker, and not visible to other users. A report is never posted anywhere public unless you separately choose to open a GitHub issue afterward, which never carries an attachment.

Who reads it

Only the Hew maintainer, through a private, access-controlled page. Sending a report also sends the maintainer one email with a summary and a link to it.

How long it's kept

Reports are kept for 90 days, then deleted automatically. If you'd like yours deleted sooner, contact the maintainer with your report ID (the HEW-XXXX-XXXX code shown after sending) and ask for it to be removed.

Following a report

The Report Bug dialog has a checkbox, Let me know what happens with this report. It is ticked by default, and Hew remembers your choice. If you untick it, Hew keeps nothing for that report.

If it is ticked, Hew keeps a private random key for the report on this computer, along with the report ID, the date sent, your Hew version, and the first line of the description. On the desktop app these go in a file named followed-reports.json in the app's config folder, readable only by your user account. On the web they go in the browser's local storage for the app. The key is not an account or an identity, and no email address is asked for.

When Hew starts, about 15 seconds after launch, it checks each followed report that is still unresolved and was last checked more than six hours ago. Each check is one small request to the same private bug-report service, with the key in a request header and never in the address. Checking stops on its own once you have seen a final status (Fixed or Closed), or after a year.

Help ▸ Sent Reports… lists your followed reports with their status and shows the conversation with Hew's developer. It lets you reply, attach a file, check now, or forget a report. Replies and attachments go to the same private service that receives reports, and the developer is emailed about each one, the way a new report emails them. Replies are plain text, up to 4,000 characters, 20 a day per report, and 200 messages per thread.

Forget this report deletes the key on this computer and asks the service to delete the conversation at once. The report itself stays with the developer.

The service keeps a conversation until 30 days after you have seen a final status, or one year after the last activity, whichever comes first. That can be longer than the 90 days a report itself is kept, because a "fixed in version" note may come later.

Following belongs to one computer or browser profile, so a report cannot be followed from another machine. Clearing browser data clears the key on the web; the service removes the conversation later. The self-hosted web build cannot send reports, so it has nothing to follow. The desktop app already makes a silent request to GitHub at launch to check for updates. The follow check is smaller, is chosen for each report, and ends by itself.

What's never stored

Your IP address is never stored. A submission is only checked against a same-day, salted hash of it, so a burst of reports from one source can be rate-limited without keeping the address itself.