Getting help.

Yes. Everything the app stores on your computer is encrypted. Not hidden, not password-protected — encrypted. Without your passphrase it is unreadable to anyone, including us.

Most people picture a locked filing cabinet. That is the wrong picture, because a filing cabinet can be pried open and then someone reads your papers.

This is different. Your collection is stored as scrambled nonsense. Someone who takes your laptop, pulls the drive out and reads the raw file gets random characters. There is no lock to pick, because the information itself is scrambled.

Your passphrase is the only thing that unscrambles it.

You. That is the entire list.

Not us — there is no "us". No account, no server, no company holding a copy.

Not anyone on the internet. The app is built so it physically cannot make a network connection. Not "we promise not to" — the ability is switched off at the engine level.

Not someone using your unlocked laptop. The app locks itself, and locking throws away the key until you type your passphrase again.

Not Apple, not iCloud, not any backup service — unless you copy a file there yourself.

Whoever has it gets scrambled nonsense. Your watches, values, serial numbers, photos and documents are all inside the encrypted data, and it does not open without your passphrase.

This is the good case. Your computer is gone; your collection record is not exposed.

If you also lost your recovery key, your collection is gone. Permanently. Nobody can recover it — not you, not us, not anybody.

That sounds harsh, and it is the same fact that makes a stolen laptop survivable. Any back door that could let you back in could let someone else in too. So there isn't one. No email reset, no security questions, no support line.

It is a one-time code shown once during setup, and it is the only other thing that can open your register. It is never shown again.

Yes, write it down. On paper. Put it where your important documents live — a safe, a safe-deposit box, with your attorney. Not in a note on the same laptop.

Setup hides the key and asks you to type one block of it back before it will finish, so a key you meant to save but did not actually write down cannot slip past.

With the recovery key, a forgotten passphrase is a minor annoyance. Without either one, it is over.

Yes, whenever you like. Data → Change passphrase, at the top of the Security section.

It asks for your current passphrase first. That is deliberate: being unlocked is not proof that you are the owner — an unattended laptop is enough — and because nobody can reset a passphrase here, someone changing it while you were away would not merely read your register, they would close it permanently.

The change itself is instant. Your passphrase never encrypts your watches directly; it wraps the key that does. Changing it re-wraps that key and rewrites none of your data, so it takes the same moment whether you own three watches or three hundred.

Your recovery key is unaffected and keeps working. Your old passphrase stops working straight away.

It is worth acting on, and you will only be asked once.

The strength check runs when a passphrase is set. If yours was chosen in an older version, before that check existed, it was never measured — so the first time it is measured is on an ordinary unlock, which is when you may see the message.

We do not ask you to change your passphrase on a schedule, and we never will. Forced expiry pushes people towards small edits of the same password, and here it carries a real risk: there is no reset, so a change made under protest and then forgotten costs you the collection. We would rather tell you once, plainly, when a passphrase actually measures as weak, and leave the decision with you.

Being straight about the limits:

• Malware running on your computer while your register is unlocked. If something has taken over your machine while you are logged in, encryption at rest does not help.
• A passphrase written on a sticky note attached to the laptop.
• Someone watching you type it.
• You deleting your own data with no backup.

Encryption stops a file being read. It cannot stop the ordinary ways people lose things.

No, and you should not have to. You do not need to read a line of code to check it — open your computer's developer tools or a network monitor, use the app through a normal session, saving and exporting along the way, and watch the connection activity stay at zero the entire time. An app that asks you to take security on faith is not worth taking on faith, so we built the claim to be checkable at runtime, by anyone, in a few minutes.

Five things. Most owners use two or three of them:

• Insurance documentation
• Knowing whether you are up or down, honestly
• Estate planning
• Tracking the hunt — grails and watches you are chasing
• Simply knowing what you own

If a watch is stolen or lost, your insurer asks what you had, what it was worth, and what proof you have. Guessing after the fact is a bad position.

The app prints a scheduled property inventory — every watch, reference, serial number, market value and insured value — to hand to an insurer or attach to a claim. It flags anything worth more than it is insured for.

You can also attach the actual paperwork: invoices, warranty cards, appraisals, all encrypted alongside the record.

Yes, and it keeps two numbers apart on purpose:

UNREALIZED

what your collection might be worth today, based on values you typed in. An estimate. Not money.

REALIZED

what actually happened when you sold. Real money, worked out properly: sale price, minus selling fees, minus what you paid, duties, shipping and servicing.

The unglamorous part. If something happens to you, whoever handles your affairs needs to know what these watches are, what they are worth, which go to a named person and which can be sold.

The estate register prints exactly that, grouped by your instructions.

Yes. Mark a watch as "Seeking" and it sits in your register as part of the hunt — but it is excluded from every financial total and from both printed documents, because you do not own it.

When you buy it, enter the purchase price or date and the app converts it to Owned automatically.

Because everything it stores is encrypted, and that passphrase is the key. There is no "set this up later" — later would mean storing your collection unprotected in the meantime.

Use the "Generate a strong passphrase" button unless you have a reason not to. It gives you seven ordinary words — something along the lines of metal-digit-tape-singer-punch-panel-white. That is far harder to guess than the usual name-and-year with a symbol stuck on each end, and far easier to remember than a jumble of characters.

If you would rather type your own, the app scores it as you go and turns down the genuinely weak ones. Since nobody can reset it for you, that check is the only chance to catch a poor choice before it matters.

Yes. Either bring your own sheet or start from the template.

Data → Download spreadsheet template gives you an .xlsx with the fifteen columns it reads and one example row to replace. Every column is formatted as text, so a reference or serial number beginning with a zero keeps it. Leave the header row as it is; blank cells are fine, and only Brand or Model is required.

Data → Import a spreadsheet reads .xlsx and .csv alike — there is no need to convert anything. Before a single row is imported it shows you every column in your file, which field it will go into, any column it did not recognise, and how many watches will be updated versus added.

IMPORTING YOUR OWN EXPORT DOES NOT DUPLICATE IT. The last column, "Watch ID", is how a row is recognised as a watch you already hold. Export your register, change some prices in a spreadsheet, import it back, and those watches are updated rather than added a second time.

An update only changes the fifteen columns in the sheet. Photographs, documents, service history and everything else on the record are left exactly as they were — so correcting a price in a spreadsheet cannot cost you a warranty card.

A row with no Watch ID is added as a new watch. That is what the blank template is for, and what happens to rows you type yourself. If you delete the Watch ID column from an export and import it back, you WILL get a second copy of everything — the app says so in the preview when it sees rows whose serial you already hold.

One caution if you are using .csv rather than the template: spreadsheet programs drop a leading zero from a number as you type it, so a reference of 0123 becomes 123 in your file before this app ever sees it. Use the .xlsx template and that cannot happen.

No. Maker and model are enough to save a watch. Everything else can be added whenever you get to it.

The fields that matter most for insurance are serial number, market value and scheduled (insured) value.

They answer three different questions, and a watch can be all three at once:

STARS (1-5)

how much do I love this?

GRAIL

is this one of the ones I chased?

LEDGER RATING

what do I intend to do with it: Hold, Buy, Sell, Watch?

Why they are separate: a watch that has appreciated past what you would pay today can be five stars, a grail, and marked Sell all at the same time. One combined field could not say that.

Grail is one you are evaluating, or one you chased and landed.

Holy grail is the unattainable one — the someday watch.

A watch you do not own yet, but are hunting or evaluating.

It shows in your register with a SEEKING tag, but never appears in a money total, an insurance schedule or an estate register. It is a placeholder for the hunt, not an asset.

Ledger rating "Sell" is an intention. You still own it.

Status "Sold" is a fact. It is gone, it leaves your held totals, and it moves into your realized profit and loss.

On purpose, and it tells you when it happens.

Enter a sale date or price and it marks the watch Sold. Enter loss details and it marks it Lost. Enter purchase details on a Seeking watch and it marks it Owned.

Without this, a watch you had clearly sold would still be counted in your market value, cost basis and insurance coverage — making every total wrong with nothing on screen to warn you.

Because it is the real one. It subtracts selling fees, duties and shipping you paid on the way in, and any servicing you logged while you owned it.

Worked example: a watch bought for $4,000, serviced twice for $1,950, sold for $6,500 with $780 in fees looks like a $1,570 win. It is actually a $380 loss. The disposition report shows both figures side by side.

Its market value is higher than what your policy would pay out. The gap is what you would have to absorb yourself.

Yes, but you have to tell it. Set the Insurer and "Pays up to" fields under Valuation & coverage.

Some specialist policies pay above the scheduled value — 150% is a common figure. Without that setting, the app assumes you are covered only for the scheduled figure and will warn you about gaps that do not exist.

It cuts the other way too. A standard homeowner's policy usually caps a single watch far below its value unless individually scheduled. Record that honestly and the app will tell you the truth.

Set its status to Lost and fill in the Loss & claim section: the type of loss, the date, police report number, claim number, and what the insurer actually paid you.

The settlement is treated as proceeds, exactly like a sale price, so the claim appears properly in your realized profit and loss. The disposition report labels it as an insurance claim rather than a sale.

PHOTOS are wrist shots and reference images. They are automatically shrunk so a page of twenty watches does not choke. Click any photo to see it full size, with a "Save full size" button.

DOCUMENTS are evidence — invoices, warranty cards, appraisals. Images or PDFs, stored exactly as you gave them, never compressed, because the fine print matters. They appear as a list on the watch's detail panel; click one to save the original file.

Use Documents for anything you might have to show an insurer.

Two steps:

1. Docs → Insurance schedule. This saves a file to your Downloads folder. That is the document itself, not a PDF yet.
2. Open that file — it opens in your browser — press Cmd-P, and choose "Save as PDF" from the PDF menu at the bottom-left.

The app explains this on screen when you save the document.

Doing that would mean granting the app permission to write files anywhere on your computer and to launch other programs on your behalf. That is a real increase in what the app can reach, in exchange for saving you one click. It was not worth it.

No. Your collection lives on this machine only. Moving it to another computer means exporting an encrypted vault file and taking it there yourself.

This is by design. Sync requires either:

1. A server holding the master copy (which we reject — our product is that nothing of yours sits on somebody else's server), or
2. Resolved changes across devices (which breaks the air-gap, requires a server for conflict resolution).

So we chose: no sync, which means you own the only copy, encrypted and offline. The trade is you cannot access from multiple devices without moving files around. Most collectors do that once or twice a year, not constantly.

But my Mac or PC syncs folders on its own. Does that pull in my register?

No — and this is checkable rather than something you have to take on trust. Your register is stored in the application's own data folder:

macOS~/Library/Application Support/app.watchregister.desktop/

Windows%APPDATA%\app.watchregister.desktop\

The folder-sync features built into both desktop systems are scoped to a fixed, published set of folders, and neither path above is in it:

• Apple's iCloud Drive "Desktop & Documents Folders" covers exactly ~/Desktop and ~/Documents. Nothing else, and nothing anywhere under ~/Library.
• Microsoft's OneDrive "Known Folder Move" covers Desktop, Documents and Pictures. Microsoft's own documentation states the folder set cannot be extended by Group Policy.

Neither reaches the register, and neither can be configured to. Both vendors document their own scope; links are below.

Three honest caveats, because the picture is not "nothing can ever leave":

1. Files you EXPORT are the case that actually matters. They go to your Downloads folder, and people naturally move backups into Documents — which is covered. An encrypted vault file is fine there; it is unreadable without your passphrase wherever it lands. A plain JSON export is readable by anyone who opens it. The app asks you to acknowledge this before writing that file.
2. Whole-disk backup tools (Backblaze, CrashPlan, Carbonite and the like) work on a different principle: they copy everything on the drive except an exclusion list, so they DO capture the register file. What they capture is ciphertext — useless without your passphrase or recovery key. That is exactly why the register is encrypted at rest rather than merely kept somewhere out of the way.
3. On Windows the path above is the roaming profile directory. That is untouched by OneDrive, but on a machine joined to a corporate domain, classic Windows roaming profiles can copy it to a company server at sign-in and sign-out. If this is a managed work computer, assume your employer's tooling can reach the file — still as ciphertext, but worth knowing.

Verify rather than take our word for it:

Apple https://support.apple.com/en-us/109344

Microsoft https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/redirect-known-folders

No. Market values are what you type in. A price feed would require a network connection, and this app does not make network connections.

Really. See "What if I forget my passphrase?" above. It is a deliberate feature, not a missing one.

No. The app produces an accurate record of what you paid and what you got back. What that means for your taxes is a conversation with your accountant — collectibles are often treated differently from other assets.

Watch Register is deliberately desktop-only, for reasons built into the product, not limitations we're working around.

A watch collection is something you review occasionally — a few times a year — to check provenance, look up documentation, confirm insurance coverage, or plan for sale or inheritance. That use case is not "check my phone constantly" — it's "sit down at my computer for an hour and manage the details."

A mobile app designed for that would be a different product: frequent access, summaries instead of full records, cloud sync so you can check one watch detail from anywhere.

The privacy trade-off makes sense for this product *because* you are sitting at your machine. It does not make sense for a mobile app, because mobile sync requires one of:

• A server holding your master copy (breaks our core promise)
• Cloud sync with conflict resolution (breaks the air-gap)
• Local-only mode on each device (defeats the point of mobile)

If we built a mobile app under the same security model, it would be separate data silos: phone has this version, computer has that version, no way to reconcile without leaving the device or trusting a server.

A proper mobile experience requires compromising on the architecture. Rather than do that, we are building this as a desktop application that does one thing properly: manage a complete, secure, offline register of a physical collection.

If you want a mobile app to look up a specific watch (serial, insurance, photos), that is a different product category and may happen later — but it would be separate, with its own storage and sync, not a mobile version of Watch Register.

Stop. Do not create a new passphrase — that starts a fresh empty register.

Your register lives in the application's own data folder, not inside the app itself, so moving the app or reinstalling it does not remove your collection. If you are being asked to set a new passphrase, the app is not finding that folder — most often because you are signed in to a different user account on the computer, or because a restore or a migration to a new machine skipped it.

Check you are in the same user account you set it up in. If you have an encrypted vault backup, you can open that instead — see the backup question in this section.

Your data has not been deleted. The app is not finding it.

On the lock screen, choose "Use recovery key instead" and enter the recovery key from setup. Capitals, spaces and dashes do not matter.

Once you are in, change your passphrase to something memorable (Data → Change passphrase). Your recovery key keeps working.

If you have neither, see "What if I forget my passphrase?" above. There is genuinely nothing that can be done.

Data → Save encrypted vault. That produces a single encrypted file holding everything: watches, photos, documents, owner details.

Keep it somewhere other than this laptop. It is encrypted, so a USB stick or a cloud drive is fine — without the passphrase it is unreadable to whoever holds it.

Two things worth doing:

• Store the vault file and your recovery key in different places. Together in one folder means a single loss takes both.
• Back up again after any significant change. The last backup is the only one that counts.

Use the encrypted vault for this, not "Export unencrypted (JSON)". The plain export exists for moving data into another tool, and it is readable by anyone who opens it — including anything that syncs or backs up the folder you leave it in. The encrypted vault is the one that is safe to put on a cloud drive. See "Does it sync to my phone or to the cloud?" above.

Usually yes — but read the next paragraph first, because the commonest reason people go looking for this is not actually this.

THIS IS PROBABLY NOT YOUR PROBLEM IF: the app opened and your watches are missing, or it opened empty. Nothing is lost in that case and rolling back will not help. Check the storage setting in the header first — in Vault-only mode the app deliberately opens without loading anything, and switching to Local database brings your register straight back. Only use the steps below if a save genuinely wrote the wrong thing.

How it works: every time the app saves, it renames the file it is about to replace to "register.vault.prev" and writes the new one beside it. So the version from immediately before your last save is still on disk.

To go back one step — quit the app first, then, in the folder shown on the native file storage line in Data:

1. Rename "register.vault" to "register.vault.bad".
2. Rename "register.vault.prev" to "register.vault".
3. Open the app.

Do it in that order and nothing is destroyed. Step 1 is what makes this reversible: if the older version turns out to be the wrong one, rename the two files back and you are where you started. Keep the .bad file until you are certain, then delete it.

Do NOT delete "register.vault" instead of renaming it, and do not drag "register.vault.prev" straight over the top of it — on most systems that replaces the current file with no warning, which is the one mistake this procedure exists to avoid.

Only ONE previous version is kept — the next save replaces it. This is a safety net for a save that went wrong, not a version history, and it is no substitute for exporting encrypted vault files you keep somewhere else.

Two things worth knowing:

• It is encrypted exactly like the live file, with the same passphrase. It is not a plaintext copy and it is no weaker than the register itself.
• Erasing your register removes it too. That is deliberate: an erase that quietly left a complete copy behind would make "erase" meaningless.

No, and it only happens once. An earlier version stored full-size camera images, which made the app slow. It is shrinking them for display. Files you attached under Documents are untouched.

Watch Register is published by Aveneg Technologies, LLC.

It was built for collectors who could not find anything that handled provenance, insurance schedules and estate records properly, which is why it does the unglamorous things well and none of the flashy things at all.

For bugs, questions or suggestions, email support@watchregister.app.

For anything commercial, see the next question.

Watch Register is commercially licensed software: a paid licence per user, covering personal use for tracking your own collection.

Using it inside a dealership or auction house, bundling it with a product or service, or anything at volume beyond individual use, is a separate conversation. Email legal@watchregister.app and say what you have in mind.

No, and that is the point of how it is built.

The demo is a complete, fictional record — an "Aveneg Meridian" — with every section filled in, so you can see what a finished entry looks like without having to guess. Aveneg is not a watch manufacturer and the Meridian is not a real model; every figure in it is invented.

It is excluded from everything that counts or leaves the application:

• the held count, market value, cost basis and profit figures
• the insurance schedule
• the estate register
• the disposition (realised gains) report
• the plain JSON export and the encrypted vault export
• the spreadsheet export

It is marked DEMO in the register list and says so again at the top of its detail panel. Aside from those exclusions it behaves like any other record — you can open it, edit it, attach photographs to it, and remove it — because the fastest way to understand the app is to take one apart.

Removing it: press "Remove demo" in its detail panel, or use "Remove the demo watch" in the Data menu. Either removes only the demo. To load it again, use "Load a demo watch" in the Data menu or the link in the footer. Nothing you have entered yourself is touched by any of this.

The exclusions are enforced by an automated check that runs before every release, not by remembering to filter it in each report.

Docs → "Sales dossier". Pick the watch, pick how much to disclose, and you get a zip file to send.

Three levels, because trust rises through a sale and disclosure should rise with it:

LISTING

a public copy for eBay or Chrono24. Specifications and photographs only. No serial number, no documents.

INTERESTED BUYER

for someone asking real questions. Adds a partial serial number, service history, warranty, and any documents you tick.

SALE / HANDOVER

for the person actually buying it. Full serial number and every document you tick.

What is NEVER included, at any level: what you paid, the MSRP, your insured value, your insurer or policy number, your deductible, your appraiser, where you keep the watch, your private notes, who you have left it to in your will, and any loss or claim history.

That list is not a setting you can switch off, and it is not a filter applied at the end. The dossier is built from a list of fields that are allowed OUT. A field reaches a buyer because it is named on that list. Adding a new field to the app does not add it to a dossier.

Two things worth knowing:

DOCUMENTS ARE TICKED ONE BY ONE. There is deliberately no "attach everything" button. Hiding the serial in the summary achieves nothing if the warranty card you attached alongside it shows the serial in full, and only you know which of your documents shows what.

PHOTOGRAPHS OF DOCUMENTS ARE CLEANED ON THE WAY OUT. A photo taken on a phone carries hidden information — where it was taken, when, and on what camera. Sent to a stranger, that can say where your collection is kept. Image documents are re-encoded when they go into a dossier, which removes it. The copy inside your register is untouched. PDFs cannot be cleaned this way, so if you include one the app tells you so before it saves.

Before anything is written you get a summary naming the level, the serial treatment and the document count, and you have to confirm. Open the zip before you send it — what is inside is what the other person will see.