Where Abliteration keeps your data

Short answer

Everything Abliteration stores lives under one per-user folder. On Windows that folder is %LOCALAPPDATA%\Caty\; on macOS it is ~/Library/Containers/org.abliteration.models/Data/Library/Application Support/Abliteration/. Reinstalling the app does not wipe chats or models, you would have to delete that folder manually.

Detailed explanation

Modern desktop apps write user data to a per-user location that survives app updates and reinstalls. Abliteration uses the standard location on each OS.

On Windows. %LOCALAPPDATA%\Caty\ is the personal, per-user folder that Windows keeps across app updates. The app’s own install folder is read-only, so nothing user-facing lives there.

On macOS. The Mac build is a sandboxed app, so its writable area sits under ~/Library/Containers/org.abliteration.models/Data/Library/Application Support/Abliteration/. Everything the app writes goes there, and the sandbox keeps it isolated from other apps. To open the folder quickly in Finder, press Cmd+Shift+G and paste the path above.

Layout inside the folder, same on both platforms:

• catylocal.db - SQLite database with all your chats, messages, reasoning blocks, pinned or renamed chats. (chats.db on macOS in some early builds; both names refer to the same file.)
• models/ - every GGUF you added to the app. Drag-and-dropped models are copied here. Removing a model in the UI deletes it from this folder. Also contains manifest.json with per-model settings (custom name, context slider mode and value).
• attachments/ - files and images attached to chats, plus extracted text kept for context recall.
• settings.json - UI state (theme, hardware popup shown or not, first-launch flag).

The database schema evolves non-destructively: when a new column is added, old rows just get NULL for that column. You never lose chat history from an app update.

Why it matters

If Abliteration is misbehaving and you want a clean slate: closing the app and deleting catylocal.db wipes all chats but keeps your model files. Deleting the whole per-user folder wipes everything, requiring you to re-add models on next launch.

If you want to move your data to another machine: copy the entire per-user folder to the same relative path on the new machine (Windows to Windows, or Mac to Mac). Same login user, same experience.

If disk space is tight: the models/ folder is by far the biggest thing (multi-GB per model). Removing unused models in the UI reclaims that space immediately.

In Abliteration specifically

Windows shortcut. Type %LOCALAPPDATA%\Caty in Explorer’s address bar to open the folder directly.

macOS shortcut. In Finder, press Cmd+Shift+G, paste ~/Library/Containers/org.abliteration.models/Data/Library/Application Support/Abliteration/, and press Enter.

The database is a single file, so you can back it up or restore it just by copying catylocal.db while the app is closed.

Related

• Chat management - pin, rename, delete lives in the database
• Model won’t load - sometimes solved by cleaning the models folder
• Updates - how a new version keeps this folder untouched