Every capture goes into the active project. A project is a name and the captures filed under it, which Lens keeps itself. A folder on your machine is optional — link one and the project is mirrored into it.
1. Creating a project
- Press New project in the popup, or New project on the dashboard both open the same flow.
- Give it a name this is what appears in the project dropdown and in project_metadata.json.
- Press Create or Create & link folder to pick a folder at the same time. Chrome asks for read/write access to that one folder.
Cancelling the folder picker cancels the folder, not the project — you keep the name you just typed.
2. Why the folder is optional
Chrome hands out folder permission for as long as the extension is running and takes it back when it stops. That used to mean a capture taken after a lapse had nowhere to go. Lens now keeps the project's captures itself, so the folder is a copy, not the destination: losing access costs you the copy for a while, never the capture.
- With no folder linked — everything works. Captures, guides and the timeline live in the extension, and you get files out with Copy and Save a copy on any capture.
- With a folder linked — the same, and every capture is written into the folder as well, so your files are on disk in a form any other tool can read.
3. What Lens writes into the folder
- The capture files themselves — .png, .jpg, .gif, .mp4 or .webm.
- project_metadata.json — a timeline entry per capture recording the file name, page title, page URL, timestamp, the captured region and your note.
The metadata file is plain JSON and is meant to be read by other tools. Every entry and the file itself carry "createdBy": "Lens by Vectored".
4. Linking a folder later
Press Link in the popup or Link folder on the project card. Lens counts what the project already holds and asks whether to copy it across, telling you how many files and how much disk that is.
The copy runs in the background and survives the browser being closed part way through — it picks up where it stopped. Files the folder already has at the same size are left alone, so relinking a folder Lens was already writing into costs a look rather than a rewrite. Say no and Copy everything across stays on the project card for later.
5. Switching the active project
Use the dropdown at the top of the popup. Only the active project receives new captures; the others keep their files and history untouched.
6. When folder access lapses
After a browser restart or an extension reload, folder permission can lapse — and the extension's background worker is not allowed to ask for it back on its own, because that needs a click.
The popup folder row then reads paused, with a Reconnect button; the dashboard card says the same and shows how many writes are waiting. One click restores access.
Captures taken while access was gone are queued, not lost. Reconnecting writes them out, and so does simply reopening the browser. Catch up folder on the project card does it on demand.
7. How much room Lens is using
Because a project holds its own captures, that storage is worth watching: a sixty-step guide is tens of megabytes, and a minute of GIF can be more. Settings > Storage shows what Lens is using against what your browser allows it, broken down per project, and warns when there is little room left.
Linking a folder and deleting guides you have a copy of is the way to reclaim it. So is deleting a project you have finished with.
8. Deleting a project
Delete a project from the dashboard's project card. Its captures are removed from Lens — files already written to your folder are left alone, because those are yours and in your own directory. The default project is protected and cannot be deleted.