Alias

Alias is a Tauri desktop app for pseudonymizing text and spreadsheets: entity detection (including persons via local ONNX NER), original → alias mapping, encode / decode with a persistent alias table, file import (e.g. Excel), and light/dark themes.

Contents

Screenshots · Features · Install · Usage · Platforms & files · Development · Contributing · License

Screenshots

Images live in screenshots/. Included in this repo:

File	Description
alias_linux-dark.png	Main window, Linux, dark mode
alias_linux-light.png	Main window, Linux, light mode
alias_linux-light-detect.png	Detect / candidates, Linux, light mode

Optional extras: windows-main.png, macos-main.png, mapping-panel.png, etc.

Features

• Local NER (ONNX): model downloads on first run when needed.
• Split UI: text panel and alias table (original, alias, category, confirmed) with a resizable divider.
• Encode / decode with substitution preview and highlighting.
• Persistent store (loaded on startup), JSON import/export, optional autosave path.
• Files: open dialog and drag & drop; text and spreadsheets via the Rust parser (e.g. Excel through calamine).
• Themes: light / dark; choice is remembered (system / light / dark).
• Stack: Tauri 2, Vite, TypeScript frontend; Rust backend with optional onnx-ner feature.

Install

From GitHub Releases

1. Open Releases (v* tags).
2. Download the asset for your OS (.exe / NSIS, .msi, .dmg, .AppImage, .deb when published).
3. Verify checksums with SHA256SUMS.txt when provided.

From source

See Development.

Usage

1. Start the app; allow NER model download if prompted (progress is shown in the UI).
2. Paste text or open / drop a file.
3. Run Detect, review candidates, accept into the mapping table or add aliases manually.
4. Encode applies stored aliases to text; Decode reverses using the mapping store.
5. Export/import the store or save results via the file dialogs.

Toolbar: file actions, encode/decode-related controls, theme, NER status, About.

Platforms & file formats

Desktop	Windows, Linux, macOS (depends on Tauri / WebView)
Bundles	See src-tauri/tauri.conf.json: e.g. deb, appimage, nsis, dmg
Formats	Text and spreadsheet formats supported by the parser (notably Excel via calamine)

Development

Requirements: Node.js, Rust (stable), and Tauri v2 prerequisites for your OS (e.g. WebKitGTK on Linux, WebView2 on Windows).

git clone https://github.com/fly2nbc-oss/alias.git
cd alias
npm install
npm run dev              # Vite; use `npm run tauri dev` for the full Tauri shell

Frontend only:

npm run build            # tsc && vite build

Release binary (no automatic version bump):

npm run build
npm exec tauri build

With automatic patch bump (see package.json / scripts/bump-patch.mjs):

npm run tauri:build

Linux AppImage: Tauri expects linuxdeploy on PATH. If it is missing, the AppImage step fails but the .deb bundle can still succeed.

Smaller binary without bundled ML: build with --no-default-features to disable onnx-ner (documented in src-tauri/Cargo.toml).

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md. Changelog: CHANGELOG.md.

License

Apache-2.0.