What happens if you close the tab during an analysis
Closing the tab during a Portraitor analysis stops the process. What the pages say happens to an interrupted portrait, a half sent upload and a finished portrait, and the refund question they leave open.
If you close the tab or the browser during a Portraitor analysis, the process stops: the home page says “Keep this tab open. Closing the browser will stop the process.” An interrupted portrait is kept in your history and can be resumed, but neither the home page, the privacy policy nor the terms say whether a tab you closed yourself counts as a failed analysis for the automatic refund.
A portrait is not made quietly on a server while you get on with something else. Part of the work runs in your browser, and the page asks you to stay. This page sets out what Portraitor‘s home page, privacy policy and terms say happens when you do not stay, what happens to the finished portrait afterwards, and where those pages stop.
Closing the tab stops the work, because the work is in the tab
While a portrait is being made, the home page shows a holding message: “Masking, then reading, then writing. Keep this tab open. Closing the browser will stop the process.” The first of those three stages happens on your own machine.
The privacy policy says that before any part of the conversation is transmitted, your browser replaces names, email addresses, telephone numbers, postal addresses and credentials with anonymous placeholders, and that “This process takes place entirely on your own device.” Masking is your browser’s job, which is why the tab matters. Because the policy puts masking before any transmission, a tab closed while masking is still running has sent nothing.
The pages are less specific about the two later stages. They name reading and writing, and they say a closed browser stops the process. They do not describe what a close does at each stage separately, and this page does not fill that in.
A refresh is not the same as a lost portrait
The privacy policy lists everything the site keeps on your device, and one item exists for this exact case: “a snapshot of the placeholder list that allows an interrupted portrait to resume after the page is refreshed.” Like the rest of that list, it is not transmitted, and it is removed when you clear your browsing data for the site.
The home page FAQ points the same way. Asked what happens if you paid but never got a portrait, it answers: “Check your history in the app. An interrupted portrait is saved there and can be resumed.” If the portrait did finish, it says to check your spam folder, and adds that “the portrait is in your browser either way.”
That history belongs to one browser. The policy mentions an identifier that distinguishes your browser’s own saved conversations from those of another browser. After an accidental close, the place to look is the same browser on the same device, before starting a new analysis.
Clearing your browsing data for the site while a portrait is interrupted removes the snapshot that lets it resume, together with the rest of your history. The policy says clearing it removes it permanently.
The fifteen minute clock on a half finished upload
A long chat does not travel in one piece. The privacy policy says a very large conversation “arrives in parts and is held in a temporary file on our server until the analysis request is assembled, at which point it is consumed and deleted; an upload that is abandoned part-way becomes unreadable after fifteen minutes and is removed by our daily maintenance.”
That is the server side of a closed tab. If the browser stops partway through sending a long chat, the parts already received do not wait indefinitely. They are masked text, because only masked text is sent, and fifteen minutes later they cannot be read. The policy adds that conversation text is never written to Portraitor’s database, backups or logs.
The analysis provider is a separate matter. The policy says a long conversation is analysed in sections, each sent separately in anonymised form, and that the provider retains submitted content for a limited period to monitor misuse of its own service, a retention Portraitor says it is unable to disable. If some sections had already gone to the provider before the close, that retention applies to them. The full register of who receives what is set out in whether your chat is used to train AI.
Length decides how long the tab has to stay open. The home page FAQ says there is no hard limit, and that for the fastest result a conversation should be kept between 100,000 and 200,000 characters, roughly a few months of an active chat. Longer still works, or it can be split, with each part counting as a separate analysis. The page on analysing only part of a chat covers the time period presets that shorten a run, and which chat export files can be analysed covers what a very large export looks like.
Once the portrait exists, your browser is the archive
When a run finishes, the privacy policy says the portrait is delivered “to you alone, on screen, by email and as a copy produced on your device”, and that Portraitor does not retain it. The terms are more precise about the email: the portrait is “sent once to the email address you gave at checkout”, and Portraitor keeps no copy and “cannot reissue it if you lose it.”
On the website, the policy says your portrait history, “comprising the conversations you submit and the results returned to you”, is stored within your own browser, together with the email address last used for billing or delivery. From this point the tab can be closed freely. What removes the portrait is clearing the site’s data.
The home page badge says it in four words, “Permanently deleted when browser cleared”, and the FAQ on deleting a portrait is blunter: “It’s gone for good. We hold no backup and can’t restore one, because portraits live in your browser, not on our servers. The email we send is your only permanent copy.” A browser set to clear site data whenever it closes takes the history with it, and a portrait made in one browser is not waiting in another. The email survives both. How this fits with having no account is covered in chat analysis without an account.
The iPhone app keeps its own history instead. The policy says the app keeps your most recent 100 portraits, removed when you delete them in History or delete the app, and kept out of iCloud backups.
Three questions the published pages leave open
The first is refunds. The privacy policy says that if masking does not complete successfully, no data is transmitted and the payment is refunded automatically. The terms widen that: “If your portrait cannot be generated, or the on-device removal of identifying details cannot complete, nothing is transmitted and the charge is reversed automatically. You do not need to ask.” For a Pass, the portrait goes back to the allowance instead. The terms also name one kind of interruption that is refunded: Portraitor taking the service offline for maintenance or in an emergency. None of the three pages says whether a tab or browser you closed yourself counts. This page does not guess. If a close left you with a charge and nothing to resume, the home page FAQ ends with an instruction to email admin@portraitor.ai. What the price covers in the first place is in how much a chat analysis costs.
The second is how long resuming stays possible. The policy describes resuming “after the page is refreshed”, and the FAQ says an interrupted portrait is saved in your history and can be resumed. Neither gives a time limit, and neither says whether a resume works the same after the whole browser has been quit and reopened as after one page reload.
The third is what had already left before the close. The holding message names three stages, but the pages do not let you work out which sections of a long chat had reached the analysis provider at the moment you closed the tab, and so which fall under its misuse retention.
If you cannot keep one tab open for the length of a run, the lever the pages offer is length: a shorter chat, or a shorter time period, means a shorter wait.
Frequently asked questions
Frequently asked questions
Does closing the tab cancel a Portraitor analysis?
Yes. The home page says to keep the tab open while it works and that closing the browser will stop the process.
Do I get a refund if I close the tab by mistake?
The published pages do not say. They promise an automatic refund when masking cannot complete or a portrait cannot be generated, and when Portraitor takes the service offline, but none of them says whether a tab you closed counts.
Can I resume an interrupted portrait?
Yes, according to the home page FAQ: an interrupted portrait is saved in your history and can be resumed. The privacy policy says a placeholder snapshot kept on your device lets it resume after the page is refreshed.
Is part of my chat left on the server if I close the tab mid upload?
Only for a very large chat sent in parts, and not for long. The policy says an abandoned upload becomes unreadable after fifteen minutes and is removed by daily maintenance.
What happens to my portrait if I clear my browser?
It is removed from that browser permanently. The home page says Portraitor holds no backup and the email it sends is your only permanent copy.
Where that copy actually sits once the portrait arrives, and what it means that it lives in your own browser rather than on a server, is set out in where your portrait is saved.
Keep the tab open until the portrait arrives, keep the email it sends, and reopen the same browser if a run is cut short.
Masking happens in your tab
Names, numbers and addresses are replaced in your own browser before anything is sent, and a finished portrait stays in that browser until you clear it.
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