Case Study · Built by Elizabeth Lemoine
All your cloud storage.
One place.
Northlight Vault is a free Windows desktop app that lets you browse Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox together — without switching tabs, re-authenticating, or giving any app write access to your files. Built because the problem was real and no existing tool solved it cleanly.
The problem
Most professionals who use cloud storage don't use just one service. They have Google Drive for one client, OneDrive for another, Dropbox from a previous role. Finding anything means opening three browser tabs, signing into each one, navigating separately, and hoping you remembered which service it's actually on.
Existing "unified storage" tools either required write access (a hard no for most professional contexts), synced files locally (unnecessary and slow), or charged a monthly fee for what should be a simple browsing problem. Vault is the simple version of that idea: read-only, local, free, and honest about what it does.
Key design decisions
01
Read-only by design
Vault requests read-only OAuth scopes from every connected service — not because it couldn't request more, but because it doesn't need to. The constraint is intentional.
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Simpler trust modelUsers and IT admins can approve Vault instantly — there's nothing it can do to their files
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Smaller attack surfaceNo write tokens means a compromised session can't modify or delete anything
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Clearer product scopeRead-only keeps the product focused — it does one thing and does it well
02
Desktop, not browser
Vault is an Electron app running locally on Windows — not a web service. Credentials stay on the user's machine and the app works independently of any backend infrastructure.
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No server, no accountNothing passes through a Northlight server — OAuth tokens live locally, API calls go direct to each cloud provider
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Offline-capable metadataBrowsed folder structures can be cached locally so the app feels fast even on slower connections
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Native file openingFiles open in whatever app handles them on your machine — no in-app preview required
03
Free, permanently
Vault has no subscription, no freemium tier, and no plan to add one. The decision to ship it free was strategic, not accidental.
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Removes the friction barrierA free tool gets tried. A paid tool gets evaluated. For a first product from a new name, being tried matters more than capturing revenue
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Builds the Northlight audienceVault users become Aurora Brief subscribers and Northlight brand contacts — the distribution value exceeds any subscription revenue at this stage
04
Privacy-first architecture
The app was designed to be auditable. Every permission request and data flow is explained in plain language on the download page — not buried in a privacy policy.
How it works
Vault connects to each cloud provider directly using their official APIs and OAuth 2.0. When a user connects an account, they authenticate in their browser through the provider's own login flow — Vault never sees or stores passwords.