Migrating from the old app

If you ran the previous beta (0.9.x), the rebuilt Golden Retriever offers to bring your library across the first time you open it. This page explains exactly what happens.

The offer on first launch

On first launch, the app detects your existing data and offers to import it. You choose whether to migrate — nothing happens without your say-so.

A few reassurances up front:

• Your original data is never modified. The import only reads it.
• The old app doesn’t need to be installed or running. The import reads your existing data directly, in place.
• Everything copied is verified. The import checks what it brings across.
• It’s resumable. If the import is interrupted — you quit, the Mac sleeps, anything — it picks up where it left off. You won’t lose progress.

What carries over

• Your library — the folders you added and the files the app knows about.
• Your index — what’s been ingested and chunked.
• Your vectors — the embeddings that power semantic search. You don’t pay to re-embed anything.

What does not carry over

• Conversations — past Ask AI chats stay with the old app.
• API keys — you’ll re-enter your Gemini API key during onboarding. If you need a refresher, see the Gemini API key guide.

After the migration

Installing the new app replaces the old one in /Applications (same name). Your old data stays untouched — the import reads it in place — so once you’re happy everything is there, the old app and its leftovers can be deleted whenever you like. There’s no rush: nothing in the new app depends on them.

Something went wrong?

See Troubleshooting, or file a bug — during the beta we read every report.