Privacy
Cookie policy
LightSchemes uses cookies for two things: keeping the site working, and measuring how people read it. This page lists every one of them by name, says who sets it and how long it lasts, and shows you how to switch the measuring off. Nothing here is buried and nothing is a summary — it is the whole list.
Last updated: 2026-08-14
What a cookie is
A cookie is a small file a website asks your browser to keep. When you come back, the browser hands it over again, so the site can recognise the same browser. Some cookies are set by us. Some are set by a company whose code runs on our pages — those are called third-party cookies, and on this site they all come from one source: Yandex Metrica, our analytics tool.
Some of the things we store in your browser are not cookies at all. Those are listed further down, because they should be, even though no cookie rule requires it.
What we use cookies for
Essential cookies. These make the site function. They keep your login session alive and protect forms from being submitted by another site on your behalf. They carry no advertising and no profile. If you block them, logging in and sending a support message stop working.
Analytics and session recording. We use Yandex Metrica to understand which setups get read, which pages people leave immediately, and where the site is confusing. Metrica's Session Replay feature — Yandex calls it Webvisor — records individual visits: mouse movement, scrolling, clicks, and page content, so a visit can be played back afterwards. This is the part most people care about, so it has its own section below.
We do not run advertising on this site. We sell nothing here, we place no ads, and we have no advertising account. There is one wrinkle, and we would rather say it than have you find it: the Metrica tag performs an identifier sync with Google's advertising cookie-matching service, which sets a short-lived cookie on doubleclick.net. We do not use it, we get nothing from it, and we cannot switch that one behaviour off separately — it is part of the tag. It is listed in the table.
The cookies this site sets
Essential — set by LightSchemes
| Cookie | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
| lightschemes_session | Identifies your browser session so the site can remember you between page loads — a logged-in state, a form you half-filled, a confirmation message. The session contents live on our server, not in the cookie. | 30 days |
| XSRF-TOKEN | A security token. It lets our forms prove a request came from our own pages and not from another site posting on your behalf. | 30 days |
| remember_web_… | Set when Remember me is ticked on the login form, which it is by default. It keeps you signed in even after the session cookie lapses, so you are not asked to log in again when you come back to your workspace. Untick the box before logging in — on a shared computer, say — and this cookie is never created. | 400 days |
Analytics and session recording — set by Yandex Metrica on lightschemes.com
| Cookie | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
| _ym_uid | Identifies a browser so repeat visits can be counted as the same reader. | 1 year |
| _ym_d | Stores the date of your first visit. | 1 year |
| _ym_isad | Records whether an ad blocker is present. | 20 hours |
| _ym_visorc | Makes Session Replay work — the recording of an individual visit. | 30 minutes |
| mdd | Set by the Metrica tag on our domain. It is not described in Yandex’s published cookie list, so we are not going to guess at its purpose. | 1 day |
Set by Yandex on Yandex’s own domains
These are set when the Metrica code loads, on yandex.ru and mc.yandex.ru rather than on our domain. We do not control them and cannot read them.
| Cookie | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
| yandexuid | Identifies a user across Yandex services. | up to 400 days |
| yuidss | Identifies a user across Yandex services. | up to 400 days |
| i | Identifies a user across Yandex services. | up to 400 days |
| ymex | Stores supporting information for Metrica — identifier creation times and alternative values. | 1 year |
| yabs-sid | Session identifier. | until you close the browser |
| bh | Not described in Yandex’s published cookie list. | up to 400 days |
| pi | Not described in Yandex’s published cookie list. | up to 400 days |
| yashr | Not described in Yandex’s published cookie list. | up to 400 days |
Advertising — set indirectly
| Cookie | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
| test_cookie | Set by an advertising identifier sync that the Metrica tag performs. It checks whether cookies can be written. We receive nothing from it and use nothing from it. | ~15 minutes |
A note on those lifetimes, because the number matters. Yandex asks your browser to keep yandexuid, yuidss and i until 2036. Modern browsers refuse and cap the storage at around 400 days, which is what actually gets stored. We are quoting what your browser keeps, not what Yandex requested.
Yandex Metrica, in plain terms
Metrica is a free web analytics product. When you open a page here, the Metrica script loads from mc.yandex.ru and sends Yandex information about the visit — the page address, the referring page, your approximate location derived from your IP address, your device, browser and screen size, and what you do on the page.
Session Replay records individual visits, not just totals. Mouse movement, scrolling, clicks, key presses and the content of the page are captured so the visit can be watched back as a recording. It is not anonymous aggregate statistics and we are not going to describe it as if it were.
Yandex states that Session Replay does not record fields where people enter confidential information — it detects them and replaces the contents with asterisks. That is Yandex's behaviour, not a guarantee we can make on their behalf, and it is one more reason not to type anything sensitive into a form on any site you have not read the policy for.
We have not asked Metrica to record anything beyond what its default configuration captures. We do not upload customer lists to it, we do not send it your name or email address, and we do not use it to target anything at you.
Where the data goes. Yandex is a company outside the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom. Yandex's own privacy policy states that Russia — where its infrastructure operates — “is a jurisdiction outside the European Economic Area, which has not been recognized by the European Commission as providing an adequate level of personal data protection.” If that matters to you, switch it off; the next section tells you how, and the site works exactly the same without it.
Yandex's own documents, if you want the primary sources:
How to turn the analytics off
You do not need our permission and you do not need an account. There are three routes, and they work at different levels.
1. Yandex's own opt-out
Yandex publishes a browser add-on that, in its words, “blocks storing cookie files on the user's computer and restricts data transmission to Yandex Metrica.” It works on every site using Metrica, not just this one.
- Firefox: Yandex Metrica opt-out add-on
- Chrome: Yandex Metrica blocker
- Yandex's instructions: Opting out of Yandex Metrica
An add-on lives in the browser you installed it in. If you use a different browser or a different device, install it there too.
2. Block the analytics in your browser
Every major browser can block third-party cookies, block a specific site's cookies, or clear what is already stored. Blocking third-party cookies stops the Yandex and DoubleClick cookies. Blocking cookies from lightschemes.com stops all of them, including ours.
- Chrome — delete, allow and manage cookies
- Safari on Mac — manage cookies and website data
- Safari on iPhone and iPad — clear history and cookies
- Firefox — clear cookies and site data
- Microsoft Edge — manage cookies
Most browsers also have a private or incognito window, which discards everything when you close it.
3. A content blocker
Tracker-blocking extensions and blocking DNS services will stop mc.yandex.ru from loading at all. We are not going to recommend a particular one, but if you already use one, it almost certainly covers this.
What stops working if you block cookies
Blocking the analytics costs you nothing. Every page, diagram, tool, guide and relight scene works exactly the same.
Blocking essential cookies from lightschemes.com is different. Without them you cannot log in, stay logged in, or send a message through the support form — the security token those forms depend on is a cookie. Reading the library still works.
You do not need to come back here to change anything — the switches are in your browser, and they stay switched.
Things we store in your browser that are not cookies
The rules on cookies are not really about cookies — they cover anything a site stores on your machine. So these belong on this page as much as the tables above, and a policy that listed only the storage with the word “cookie” attached would not be an honest account of what is on your device.
| What | Where | Why |
|---|---|---|
| lightschemes.compare, lightschemes.compareMode | session storage | Remembers which setups you ticked for comparison. Cleared when you close the tab. |
| setup-photo-fit-contain | local storage | Remembers whether you prefer a photograph fitted or filled. |
| lightschemes.cookie-notice-dismissed | local storage | Remembers that you closed the cookie notice, so it does not follow you around the site. It is stored in your browser rather than as a cookie, because a cookie notice that sets a cookie to hide itself would be a poor start. |
None of them is an identifier, none is sent to us or to anyone else, and clearing your browser data removes them.
Changes to this policy
If we add a tool that sets cookies, change what we use Metrica for, or remove it, we will tell you: the cookie notice reappears and says what changed. We are not going to edit this quietly and leave you to notice, and we are not going to ask you to keep checking the date.
Questions
Anything about this page, or a request about your data: .
See also the privacy policy for what we do with data generally, and the image license for the pictures.