Retention
How long image files stay, what the period removes — and what the trash has to do with it.
The retention period removes an asset's image files when it expires. The entry stays.
Owners and admins only, for reading too.
The signed-in product speaks German, so its labels are quoted in German throughout, with the English rendering in italics.
Three numbers that are not the same thing
1. The platform default. What applies where a workspace has never set anything. The page shows it in the field hint.
2. Your configured period. A number of days — or "off", in which case nothing is ever deleted automatically.
3. Your plan's ceiling. How long you are permitted to retain at all.
Only a configured period is clamped. A workspace that never touched the setting keeps the platform default. What applies tonight is what the page itself states: „Für diesen Arbeitsbereich gilt eine feste Aufbewahrungsfrist von … Tagen.“ (A fixed retention period of … days applies to this workspace.)
Switching it off requires a plan without a ceiling. Otherwise the save is refused: „Dein Tarif erlaubt höchstens … Tage Aufbewahrung. Ganz abschalten lässt sie sich damit nicht.“ (Your plan allows at most … days of retention. Switching it off entirely is not possible with it.)
The grace period
Where your plan's ceiling narrows — after a downgrade, say — it does not bite at once: there are 30 days in which your own period still applies. Only from the deadline on does the clamped one.
The notice about it counts only the material the clamp additionally takes.
The trash is a separate axis
It has nothing to do with retention, in both directions:
- The trash sweep only looks at when something was deleted. "Retention off" protects nothing from it.
- Retention touches no asset in the trash. Restoring brings it back whole.
The trash has its own 30 days — a fixed number, not a setting and not a plan capability.
The period expiring versus deleting permanently
Deleting from the trash removes more than the period expiring:
| Retention period | Delete permanently | |
|---|---|---|
| Image files | gone | gone |
| The entry | stays | gone |
| Verification result, checksum, provenance | stay | gone |
| In the audit trail | no | yes |
The period expiring deletes the image files. The entry stays as evidence — with filename, verification result and signature.
Deleting permanently from the trash removes the row and the provenance with it.
From the retention area, only the settings change appears in the audit trail, as „Aufbewahrung geändert“ (retention changed).
What exactly disappears
Four kinds of file: the original, its thumbnail, every output produced from it, and their thumbnails.
An asset emptied this way keeps a page of its own — not an error. It names the cause and what remains, and offers neither a download nor a manifest report. In the batch wizard such an asset is excluded with a reason of its own.
When deletion happens
Once a day, at night — so not on the second the period expires. Each run takes on a bounded amount; with a large backlog it takes several nights.