FAQ

Is Relay free?

Yes — free and open source under the MIT license, on macOS, Windows, and Linux. The full desktop application source is at relay-client/relay, which is also where releases are published. You can read it, build it yourself, or contribute.

Is my data sent anywhere?

Relay is local-first: requests, collections, history, environments, and secrets live on disk. There is no account system, Relay cloud sync, analytics, or telemetry.

Network traffic still occurs for actions that inherently need it: requests and realtime connections you start, OAuth authorization/token calls, GraphQL introspection, Git fetch/pull/push/clone operations, and release update checks.

Where is my data stored?

Platform	Path
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/Relay/
Windows	%APPDATA%\Relay\
Linux	~/.config/Relay/

The local profile is an AES-256-GCM encrypted JSON envelope stored as requests.json, not SQLite. Relay also writes request-store.key as a 0600 recovery copy of the encryption key. Where available, the same key is additionally stored in macOS Keychain, Windows DPAPI, or Linux libsecret.

Folder/Git workspace YAML is intentionally readable so it can be reviewed and committed. Sensitive values are replaced by {{relaySecret:...}} placeholders and retained in the encrypted local profile.

How do I export and back up my data?

Use Settings -> General -> Advanced data -> Export all data for a portable Relay backup. It includes profile data, history, cookies, and selected preferences; it is also a plaintext file that can contain secrets. Collection exports are for interoperability and do not include runtime history or cookies.

For an exact disk-level backup, quit Relay and copy the data directory with both requests.json and its matching request-store.key. Back up external workspace repositories separately.

See Backup & recovery for contents, exclusions, migration, and destructive restore behavior.

macOS says “the app can’t be opened”

If macOS reports the app is damaged after download, the file likely got the quarantine attribute from a non-standard download path. Run:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Relay.app

If that doesn’t help, redownload from the official releases page and compare its SHA-256 checksum.

Windows SmartScreen warns about the installer

The NSIS installer is not currently Authenticode-signed, so SmartScreen may flag it. Confirm that it came from the official releases page, verify its checksum, then use More info → Run anyway only if you trust the download.

Auto-updates aren’t working

• Check manually from Settings → Updates.
• If you want background installation, enable Settings → About → Automatically install updates.
• Make sure https://github.com/relay-client/relay/releases/latest/download/latest.json is reachable — corporate proxies sometimes block GitHub release downloads.
• If you’re on an unreleased dev build, auto-update is disabled by design.

Postman compatibility — what doesn’t carry over?

See Import & export. Short version: common pm.* scripts import into Relay’s sandboxed script fields — including pm.sendRequest, pm.collectionVariables, and CryptoJS request signing. What still needs a rewrite: scripts that require a Node.js module or external package, anything using async/await or setTimeout, Visualizers, and cloud-only Postman features. Monitors have no direct equivalent — use the CLI runner on a schedule. Mock servers do have one, and it is local: Relay serves a collection’s saved examples over HTTP on your own machine. See Mock server.

Roadmap?

There is no published roadmap document. What ships lands in the changelog, and feature requests are tracked as GitHub issues — open one if something you need is missing. Known gaps today: folder-level auth/headers/scripts (collections have them, folders do not), OAuth 1.0, NTLM and Hawk, MQTT, response visualizers (pm.visualizer.set), and setTimeout/async in the script sandbox.

How do I report a bug?

Open an issue with:

• Version (Settings → About).
• Platform and OS version.
• Steps to reproduce.
• Anonymized request if relevant (strip auth + sensitive bodies).