Archiveglass: Web Library

Version-specific help

Version 3.0 (build 4)

This guide covers version 3.0. The current website catalog lists version 3.0. Check the App Store for availability on your device; the features below require version 3.0 or later.

Version 3.0 (build 4) is now available on the App Store. Check the version on your device (About tab in 3.0) before following these new steps.

Capture: on the Library tab, type an HTTPS address (https:// is added if you leave it out) and tap the capture icon. Archiveglass makes one request for that page, following the site's redirects. It keeps no cookies or cache, runs no scripts and fetches no images. Plain http addresses, files that are not web pages, and pages over 20 MB are refused with a message.

Provenance: each capture's Record pane shows the source URL, capture time, size, link count and SHA-256. “Verify integrity now” re-hashes the stored file and reports Intact, MISMATCH or missing.

See what changed: in a capture's Record pane, tap “Recapture & compare” to add a new capture of the same address (the earlier one is never changed), then open “Show changes” or “Compare with earlier/later capture”. The comparison reports identical bytes, markup-only changes, or the readable-text lines added and removed. Very large pages are compared without exact line positions, and the screen says so.

Citations: the Cite pane formats APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago and BibTeX using the title, author, site name and publication date the page itself declares, with the capture date as the access date. Anything the page does not declare is left out. Check citations against your style guide before submitting.

Archive tab: totals, most-captured sites, and “Verify every capture”, which re-hashes every stored page. “Back up archive…” saves one JSON file holding every capture, its HTML, notes and tags. “Restore from backup…” adds only the captures whose pages still match their recorded SHA-256 and never changes or deletes what is already in the archive.

If the archive index ever becomes unreadable, Archiveglass keeps it as index-unreadable-<time>.json and rebuilds the list from the stored pages. Rebuilt captures are labelled “Unknown source” and tagged “recovered”, and their notes explain that the hash was computed at recovery.

Notes and tags are saved when you leave a capture or tap Save. They are not part of the hashed page. Swipe left on a capture in the Library to delete it together with its stored file.

Guide updated 2026-11-12.