Accounts, plans & your data

Signing in#

During the open beta, Tranzio sits behind a sign in, so you use it with a free account. Signing up takes an email address and a password, plus a quick email confirmation, and you're in. There's a Google button on both screens if you'd rather not pick another password; using it creates the account on the spot, which is why the screen says that continuing with Google means accepting the Terms and the Privacy Policy. Later, if you want extra safety, you can turn on two factor authentication in Settings; it adds a six-digit code from your phone to each sign in.

The account is what connects you to the community side of Tranzio: it's how your published adaptations carry your name, how teams can message you back, how your ratings count, and how your notifications find you. You can keep your presence as quiet or as public as you like (see Privacy & Incognito).

Tranzio can also let you skip the account and work offline as a guest. That gets you every local feature, scanning a game, translating it, building a patch, with nothing that needs the cloud: no sync between machines, no publishing, no community. Signing in later keeps everything you did as a guest, since it all lives in the game's own folder on your disk.

During the open beta that offer is switched off, so the sign-in screen asks everyone to sign in or create an account. It is a switch Tranzio's operators control, and if it is turned back on you will see the guest option on the sign-in screen. If it is turned off while you are already working as a guest, Tranzio asks you to sign in the next time you open it. Your games and translations are untouched either way, since they live in their own folders rather than in the app.

Your display name and @handle#

Two names, doing different jobs. Your display name is what everybody else sees: on a translation's credits, on a forum reply, on your person card. Your @handle is how people link to you and mention you, the way @username works elsewhere, and it is what your profile address is built from.

Both have to be yours alone. A display name is compared without regard to capitals, so "Alex" and "alex" count as the same name, and if the one you want is taken Tranzio says so as you type and offers a free alternative you can take with one press. It never renames you behind your back. A handle works the same way, except Tranzio fills the first one in from your name so you have a working one from the start.

Both can be changed whenever you like in Settings. Changing your handle changes your profile address with it, so old links stop resolving.

Your country and main language#

When you sign up, Tranzio asks for your country and your main language. Your country fills in the main language for you, and helps us understand where the people who use Tranzio are. Your main language is the one you read and write most: forum topics written for a particular language reach the people whose main language it is, so you see the ones meant for you. You can change both later in Settings.

Name, birthday, and gender#

Sign-up asks for a first name, a last name, a birthday and a gender, and all four are required. First and last name are the ones that go on receipts and on a patch's credits; the birthday is what confirms you are old enough to be here. None of them appear anywhere public on their own.

All four live in Settings → Profile afterwards, so a birthday typed wrong on the way in is a thing you can correct rather than something you are stuck with. They cannot be emptied there, because sign-up would not have let you through without them: clearing one and pressing save says which field it wants back.

Your profile photo#

Pick a picture in Settings → Profile, or while signing up, and Tranzio opens a cropper before anything is uploaded. Drag to reframe, scroll or use the slider to zoom, and rotate if the phone got it sideways. Avatars are drawn in a circle everywhere in the app, so this is the difference between choosing your framing and letting the browser guess it.

Changing your password#

Settings → Account & Security → Update password asks for one thing at a time: it emails you a code, takes the six digits, then takes the new password. It is the same path as "forgot password", and deliberately: a session someone left open on a borrowed laptop should not be enough to take the account over, and typing the old password proves nothing about who is typing it. It is also the only way that works if you signed in with Google and never set one.

Free, Pro, and Studio#

The free plan does almost everything, and that's deliberate: browsing the catalog, installing translations, building your own, publishing them, messaging, all of it. The paid Pro and Studio plans exist for heavy users, and what they add is mostly convenience and capacity rather than access.

Where your games and translations live#

Tranzio is a desktop app, and it treats your computer as home. Your library, your translation work, and your settings are stored locally, in small database files that end in .tranzio. Two good things follow from that: most of the app keeps working offline, and your work is genuinely yours, sitting on your own disk.

Signing in on another computer#

Your account travels, your files stay put. Install Tranzio on a second machine, sign in, and your messages, notifications, achievements and published adaptations are all waiting, because they belong to the account rather than to the computer. Your games, your restore points and anything you haven't published stay where you made them. So moving a translation in progress to another machine means publishing it, not copying a folder across.