Privacy & security

You are pointing this at real application data, possibly from a real user's device. That deserves a precise answer rather than a reassuring adjective.

Where data goes

Nowhere. The studio is a local web client that connects to your app over 127.0.0.1 on port 4782. Values are read on the device and rendered on your machine. There is no backend, no account, no telemetry, and no network hop that leaves your computer.

The studio holds no database of app values. Closing it discards the inspected data; small interface preferences such as theme and panel layout may remain in that browser's local storage.

Session token

Each run generates a random session token that the app must present to connect. It exists so that another process on your machine cannot attach to your app's inspection socket. It is generated for you; you never need to manage it.

Staying out of production

Two independent mechanisms, because one is not enough for something that touches storage:

It is only ever a dev dependency. The Metro wrapper may remain in your project, but its resolver checks Metro's dev flag. In a release build every supported import resolves to the real storage module; no NativeScope shim is selected.

The package repository verifies the invariant. NativeScope's CI exports a release build of its real Expo playground and fails if the shim marker is found. This tests the release branch of the resolver on every change rather than relying only on convention.

What the app-facing module does in production

The recommended nativescope.config.ts is loaded only from the development shim, so the app-facing module is not part of a normal release graph. If you install the API manually, guard it with __DEV__ and require; the /app entry point is a real module and is not automatically erased from an unconditional production import.

Writes are real writes

Editing a value in the studio writes to the actual storage on the device. There is no sandbox and no undo log at the storage layer. Treat it exactly as you would treat a database console pointed at the same data.

The one protection that does exist: NativeScope refuses to write back a value it only holds a truncated preview of. See Large datasets.