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The first time you open Elephas, it downloads about 50 MB of components that run on your computer. They let Elephas protect personal information, search your documents, detect languages and read scanned pages without sending your files anywhere. This happens once.

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What gets downloaded

You can see the same list any time in Settings › Downloads. Local AI is not part of this download. Its model is much larger and is downloaded only if you choose Local AI. See run Local AI.

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What you see

  1. Open Elephas for the first time. The download starts right away.
  2. The welcome guide appears while it runs. A small line at the bottom of the window shows Getting Elephas ready and a percentage. When it finishes, it says Elephas is ready.
  3. If you reach the step where your documents get ready before the download is done, Elephas shows Finishing setup first. Your documents follow straight after. Your files start as soon as the download completes.
How long it takes depends on your connection. You do not need to do anything unless something goes wrong.

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Why these stay on your computer

These components are why Elephas can work with confidential files:
  • Indexing happens on your computer. Always. Reading your documents, recognizing text in scanned pages and building the search index never leave your Mac or PC.
  • Personal information is hidden on your computer. When you use a cloud option, Elephas detects and hides many common personal details before your question and passages are sent. That only works if the detection runs locally, before anything leaves. See personal information protection and what data is sent to AI.
  • Every file is checked. Each file’s fingerprint is built into the app. Elephas checks every download against it and refuses anything that does not match.
After this download, reading your documents, searching them and keeping private names out of a cloud AI all happen on your computer. Elephas still goes online for other things, such as signing in, getting answers from a cloud option, Personal Sync and updates.

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Troubleshooting

Elephas shows No internet connection. Elephas will keep trying, and will carry on as soon as you are back online. Reconnect and it continues on its own.
Hotel, airport and some office Wi-Fi networks ask you to sign in through a web page before anything else works. Open your browser, sign in to the network, then click Try again.
Free up some disk space, or check that your user folder is not full or read-only, then click Try again. For other errors, see first-run download failed.
If you click Quit during setup, Elephas asks Quit now? and explains that setup resumes where it left off next time you open Elephas. Click Keep setting up to stay.

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If a component goes missing later

If a component is deleted or damaged after setup, Elephas still opens your library. You see a banner: Some features are unavailable until Elephas finishes downloading what it needs. Click Repair, or go to Settings › Downloads and click Download next to the missing item. Only the features that use that component pause until it is back.

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For IT administrators

  • Allow the download host. Components are downloaded over HTTPS from next.elephas.ai. If your network uses an allow-list, add this host.
  • Pre-load a fleet. Elephas looks for components in a machine-wide folder before downloading. Place them in /Library/Application Support/Elephas Next on Mac or %ProgramData%\Elephas Next on Windows, and users on that machine skip the download. Elephas only reads from this folder and still checks every file.

Manage downloads

First-run download failed

Where your data is stored

Use Elephas offline