The most sensitive things never leave your device, so they can't be leaked from our side: your private signing key and your actual files stay on your phone or computer. We only ever hold a fingerprint (a code) of a file, never the file itself, and a fingerprint can't be turned back into your work. If you create a paid account, your password is stored only as a scrambled, one-way value — even we can't read it — so a breach would not expose it.
Protecting your work — making a fingerprint, signing it, dating it, and verifying it later — is free and unlimited, right here on your device. You only pay if you want to publish your records to the public registry so others can look them up, get faster date-locking, or list them for discovery. Those are the paid Pro features.
No. You can tap “Do it for me,” pick your files, and it handles everything. The technical parts (fingerprints, signatures, anchoring) happen quietly in the background. You just see “protected,” with the date and your name.
Your identity and your registry records live on your device, so the one essential habit is to make a backup. The Backup feature creates a single encrypted backup file — a sealed copy of your identity, signing key, and proof records (NOT a backup of your actual creation files, such as your songs, documents, photos, or videos) — which you then save somewhere safe (and write down the passphrase, since it can’t be recovered without it). With that backup file you can restore your identity and all your records on a new device and be the same registrant, with every deed intact. To be completely clear: ByteRegistry never holds your creation files; it only ever held a fingerprint of them, so the backup cannot contain them and cannot bring them back. Keep your own separate backups of your original work, the way you always would. If you lose a device with no ByteRegistry backup, you lose the identity and the records; if you lose your original creation files, only your own file backups can bring those back. Please back up both, early.
We’d rather be honest than oversell, so here’s plainly what this tool does not do. It does NOT stop AI from training on your work — nothing on your side can, and anyone claiming otherwise isn’t being straight with you. It does NOT detect when an AI output copied or imitated your work. It does NOT block, watermark against, or remove anything from the internet. It does NOT scan other people’s work to find copies of yours. And it is NOT a copyright registration or a lawyer — it doesn’t replace registering with a copyright office. What it DOES do is one thing, done well: it creates a private, dated, signed, tamper-evident record that a specific piece of work existed, as yours, on a specific date — proof you control, that no platform owns, and that no AI can forge after the fact. In an age of fakes, that provable ‘I made this, and here’s when’ is genuinely useful — but it is evidence of authorship and priority, not a shield against AI. We want you to choose it for what it really is.
No. Your file stays on your device. ByteRegistry calculates a fingerprint of it locally and only ever records that fingerprint. Even when you publish, only the record (fingerprint, title, date) goes public — never the file.
No. Each record is sealed with your private key and tied to its exact fingerprint. Changing even a single character of a file produces a completely different fingerprint, so a tampered copy simply won’t match. And no one can forge your signature without your private key, which only you have.
As little as possible — by design. Your proof can be checked independently, using ordinary tools, without relying on us at all. That’s the point: the proof stands on its own math, not on trusting a company.
For free use: essentially nothing on our servers — your activity happens on your device. If you publish, we store the public records you chose to publish. If you subscribe, we keep an email and a scrambled password so we can manage your plan. We don’t track you, and we count usage only in totals, never tied to who you are.
It creates a permanent, dated, signed record that says: this exact file existed, in this exact form, tied to your identity, on this date. If anyone later questions who made it or when, you can prove it.
A short code calculated from your file’s contents. The same file always produces the same code; any change, however tiny, produces a totally different one. It identifies your file without revealing or storing the file itself.
It records a fingerprint of your registry in an independent, public, tamper-evident timestamping system — one that ByteRegistry doesn’t own or control. Because that outside system has its own provable clock and can’t be quietly altered, it proves your records existed no later than that moment, without anyone having to trust ByteRegistry. It’s what makes “I made this on this date” independently provable.
They’re not people — they’re independent timestamping systems, not anyone vouching for you personally. Technically, ByteRegistry uses OpenTimestamps, which anchors a fingerprint of your records into the Bitcoin blockchain — a public ledger that records when data existed and that no single party (including us) can rewrite. You can also strengthen an anchor yourself by emailing the short code to yourself; your email provider’s timestamp then acts as an additional independent witness. The point of all of it is the same: the proof of ‘when’ lives somewhere we don’t control, so you don’t have to take our word for it.
When you protect something, you can state whether it was made by a human, with AI assistance, AI-generated, or leave it unspecified. As AI-made content floods the world, an honest, dated record that a human made something becomes valuable. ByteRegistry never assumes this for you — you declare it.
Easiest way: tap “Do it for me,” and it explains each step before opening your files. Or use “Protect Files” to do it yourself. Pick the file(s), say how each was authored, and you’re done.
Use “Verify a File.” Drop in any file and it tells you whether it’s in the registry and shows the proof — who registered it and when. Verifying is always free and unlimited.
Protecting is private and free: it creates your proof on your device. Publishing is optional and paid: it posts the record (not the file) to the public registry so others can find and verify it. Your proof is fully valid whether or not you ever publish.
Protecting happens on your own device and costs us nothing, so it’s free. Publishing means we host and serve your record publicly — that’s an ongoing service, which the Pro plan covers.
Lens is the public, searchable side of ByteRegistry. When you choose to publish a record, it appears in Lens so that anyone — a collaborator, a gallery, an editor, a buyer, or someone simply checking — can look it up and confirm who registered it and when. Lens only ever shows the record (title, date, fingerprint, your declared authorship), never your actual file. Think of it as the public card catalog: it points to and proves your work without ever holding it.
No. Nothing is public unless you deliberately publish it. By default, everything you protect stays private on your device. A record only appears in Lens after you choose to publish it (a Pro feature). Private, unpublished work is structurally invisible — Lens cannot show what was never published.
Anyone can search Lens and look up a record for free — that openness is the point, because it lets people independently verify your authorship without trusting us. What’s reserved for Pro is bulk export (downloading many results as a CSV/JSON list) and high-volume searching, since those are the commercial uses. A person looking you up: free. Harvesting the whole registry: Pro.
Once your work is in Lens, your authorship is independently findable and provable. If a dispute arises, or someone wants to confirm a piece is really yours, they can search Lens and see your dated, signed record — and as AI-generated content spreads, a publicly verifiable record that a human created your work, on a certain date, becomes increasingly valuable.
Yes. Lens lets you search the public registry across all the record details and view what matches for free. Selecting results and exporting them as a CSV or JSON list (with verifiable fingerprints) is a Pro feature.
A donation is a one-time thank-you for the free tool. A subscription (Pro) unlocks the public side — publishing, fast anchoring, and listing. Both are entirely optional.
Payments go through a trusted payment provider — your card details never touch our servers. We only learn that a payment succeeded, which activates your plan.
It means you intended to publish it but it hasn’t reached the registry. Open Status, tap that row to resolve, and choose to publish (or re-sign and publish). If a record is from an older identity and can’t be re-signed, you can remove it and re-protect the file cleanly.
Yes. The Backup screen has “Start a fresh registry,” which clears this device after offering you a backup first. Useful for clearing test data before beginning your real registry.