# Options/Security

From XOWA: the free, open-source, offline wiki application
options link

## Web

Web access enabled

Choose if XOWA is allowed to access the Web:

- checked: Allow web access.
- unchecked: Forbid web access. XOWA will not connect to the internet under any circumstances. This is equivalent to pulling the network cable for XOWA only.

Note that this may cause the app to not behave properly. For example:

- Images will not download, even if "Retrieve files" is checked
- Import links on Import/List will not work
- Download dump status on Wiki/Maintenance will not work
- etc..

Also, note that this only controls XOWA's access to the internet. Viewer apps may still access the internet. For example, clicking on an external link will still launch a "Web browser". If you have VLC set up to play media files, it may access the internet when you click on a media file. A PDF app may try to update itself when you click on a PDF file.

For more information, see Help/Privacy

## Privacy

Logs enabled

Choose if logs are enabled:

- checked: Enable logs. XOWA logs application activity for diagnostic purposes. Note that these logs are never shared or uploaded. See Help/Privacy for more info
- unchecked: Disable logs. No messages will be written to the log. You can check by going to Help -> System Data -> Session Log

Bookmarks enabled

Choose if bookmarks are enabled:

- checked: Enable bookmarks. XOWA adds bookmarks whenever the user chooses "Bookmark this page". Note that these bookmarks are never shared or uploaded. See Help/Privacy for more info
- unchecked: Disable adding bookmarks. No bookmarks will be be added, even if the user clicks "Bookmark this page". You can check by clicking "Bookmark this page" and then clicking "Show all bookmarks"

History enabled

Choose if page history is enabled:

- checked: Enable page history. XOWA stores viewed pages for the Page History page (History -> Show). Note that this history is never shared or uploaded. See Help/Privacy for more info
- unchecked: Disable page history. No pages will be stored in page history. You can check by going to Help -> System Data -> Page History

Log all page history

Log every page visit in a separate log file

- checked: Logs every page visit in a separate log file: C:\xowa\user\anonymous\app\data\history\log_all.csv
- unchecked Does not log every page visit to a separate log file.

XOWA currently consolidates visits to the same page as one entry. For example, 3 visits to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth would show up only once with the `date` being the most recent one. The `date` for the previous two entries would be lost. This option retains dates for all 3 entries by logging each visit to a separate file.

Load HTML to browser method

Choose how HTML is loaded into the browser: This is a performance optimization with privacy implications

- mem: Load HTML through memory by calling `browser.setText(html)`. For unknown reasons, SWT / XULRunner uses more memory when loading HTML by setText -- as much as 5 - 10 MB for a page like en.w:Earth.
- url: Load HTML through the file system by calling `browser.setUrl(file, html)`. This call uses less memory, but requires writing the HTML to disk. (see /xowa/user/anonymous/app/tmp/html) Although setting HTML via disk is theoretically slower than memory, the time difference is not noticeable. This may be more of an issue for users with privacy concerns. For more info on the latter, see Help/Privacy.

Note that mem is currently the default, but url will be made the default in a future release.

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