Vanish

Vanish is an open-source, local-first app for finding, reviewing, and cleaning up your social media footprint across platforms.

It brings your activity into one place so you can decide what should stay, what should go, and clean it up on your own terms.

Vanish currently runs as an interactive terminal application.

Current Alpha

v0.1.0-alpha focuses on Instagram export data and assisted manual cleanup. It can:

• Open Meta's official export page after your explicit selection.
• Import a local Instagram JSON export ZIP, including supported data from a partial export.
• Review, filter, and select activity before generating a local cleanup plan.
• Guide manual unfollow, unlike, and own-comment deletion actions in your browser. Vanish never performs those Instagram changes itself.
• Stop a cleanup session, close Vanish, reopen it, and resume later.
• Load and review saved cleanup plans.
• Keep local history, audit records, workspace data, and a local-data wipe flow.
• Keep no-op execution progress in a durable local journal and offer explicit, safety-classified resume or abandonment after restart.
• Import an official X/Twitter archive ZIP, retain only supported current posts and linked media, and browse that read-only dataset after restart.
• Offer a read-only Reddit official API planner prototype.

Vanish does not yet provide automatic or complete multi-platform cleanup. See docs/platforms.md for current support and docs/safety.md for boundaries.

Platform Support

Platform	Import or scan	Cleanup planning	Assisted cleanup	Automatic cleanup
Instagram Export	Supported	Supported	Supported	No
X / Twitter Archive	Supported local archive	No	No	No
Reddit	Official API, access pending	Prototype	No	No
Other platforms	Planned	Planned	Planned	Planned

Instagram Export is the cleanup path. X archive support is a local-only, read-only post browser; see docs/x-archive.md. Reddit is an experimental, read-only official API planner prototype. A developer access request has been submitted to Reddit, and the project is awaiting a response, so the integration may not be usable in public builds yet. Approval has not been granted. Reddit access does not block this Instagram alpha release.

How Vanish Works

1. Request or import social activity data.
2. Review and filter activity.
3. Select what should be cleaned up.
4. Generate a cleanup plan.
5. Work through supported cleanup actions.
6. Stop and resume later.

Download and Install

Prebuilt alpha binaries will be available from the GitHub Releases page. Choose the archive for your platform, extract it, and run the executable:

Platform	Archive	Run
Windows amd64	vanish_<tag>_windows_amd64.zip	Extract archive, then run vanish.exe.
Linux amd64	vanish_<tag>_linux_amd64.tar.gz	tar -xzf <archive> then ./vanish_<tag>_linux_amd64/vanish
Linux arm64	vanish_<tag>_linux_arm64.tar.gz	tar -xzf <archive> then ./vanish_<tag>_linux_arm64/vanish
macOS amd64	vanish_<tag>_darwin_amd64.tar.gz	tar -xzf <archive> then ./vanish_<tag>_darwin_amd64/vanish
macOS arm64	vanish_<tag>_darwin_arm64.tar.gz	tar -xzf <archive> then ./vanish_<tag>_darwin_arm64/vanish

For v0.1.0-alpha, names are equivalent to vanish_v0.1.0-alpha_windows_amd64.zip and the matching Linux/macOS archives. Each release also includes checksums.txt for SHA-256 integrity checking.

Alpha binaries are unsigned, so your operating system may show a warning. A checksum confirms that an archive has not changed since release; it is not code signing or identity verification.

On Windows PowerShell:

Expand-Archive -LiteralPath .\vanish_v0.1.0-alpha_windows_amd64.zip -DestinationPath .
Set-Location .\vanish_v0.1.0-alpha_windows_amd64
.\vanish.exe

Build from Source

Vanish requires Go 1.26.4 (the version declared in go.mod) and a terminal that supports interactive TUI apps.

git clone https://github.com/itsmeares/vanish.git
cd vanish
go run ./cmd/vanish

Run checks with:

gofmt -l .
go test -count=1 ./...
go vet ./...
go build ./cmd/vanish

Instagram Export

In Instagram, use this current Meta export flow:

1. Instagram Settings
2. Accounts Centre
3. Your information and permissions
4. Export your information
5. Create export
6. Choose the Instagram profile.
7. Choose Export to device.
8. Customise information.
9. Set Date range to All time.
10. Set Format to JSON.
11. Start the export.

Meta may take time to prepare the export; Vanish does not need to remain open. Partial exports can still be imported when they contain supported data. The ZIP stays on your machine.

Privacy and Safety

Vanish has no cloud backend or default telemetry. It does not collect platform passwords, cookies, browser sessions, or private API access, and it does not scrape or automate a browser. Instagram cleanup remains user-directed manual work in the system browser. X archive import performs no network access or remote post actions.

The Reddit prototype is the narrow exception to local-file-only behavior: it uses the official API within its documented read-only boundary. Details live in docs/safety.md.

Local Data

Vanish stores local workspace metadata, history, audit records, safe manual cleanup progress, and durable no-op execution journals in its app directory. It does not copy raw exports. For X archive browsing, it explicitly retains normalized supported post text and linked media under x-archives/; that data is removed by local-data wipe. Original export ZIPs and plan files outside the app directory are not deleted.

For Reddit, the operating-system credential store is primary. Only after explicit confirmation, an unavailable credential store may use a permission-restricted local-file fallback under the app directory. When the credential store returns, Vanish migrates the secret and removes that fallback. Wipe removes fallback files there, but not secrets held by the operating-system credential store.

See docs/local-data.md for locations, retained metadata, and wipe behavior.

Known Limitations

• Instagram changes are performed manually in your browser.
• Instagram export formats can change.
• Comment previews are memory-only and disappear after restart.
• X archive support is read-only and covers current posts, replies, quote posts, reposts, and current community posts only.
• Reddit remains an experimental read-only prototype awaiting developer access.
• Vanish has no automatic platform mutations or browser automation.

Development

See docs/release-checklist.md for release checks and docs/platforms.md for support details. Contributions should preserve the local-first and explicit-user-action boundaries documented in docs/safety.md.

License and affiliation

AGPL-3.0. Vanish is not affiliated with Instagram, Meta, Reddit, Redact, X, YouTube, or any supported or planned platform.