Question 1

Is my data sent anywhere?

Accepted Answer

No. Your lists are processed in your web browser only. They are not sent through the internet, and not stored in the browser. Save a session file (File > Save session) to keep your work.

Question 2

Does the browser remember anything?

Accepted Answer

Lists are never kept. Interface settings (theme, tour progress, dismissed notes) are remembered only if you tick "Save my preferences on this device" in News and tours or in Settings, in two local storage keys. Until then nothing is stored. There are no cookies, no analytics and no third-party requests.

Question 3

Can it handle large datasets?

Accepted Answer

Files with hundreds of thousands of elements load in the background with progress and a Cancel button, and the page stays usable. Counts are always exact; the elements of a region are collected when you open it or export.

Question 4

Can I use it to clean lists?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Import or paste lists, remove duplicates, check overlaps with percentages, then export a clean unified dataset or an intersection table.

Question 5

Which total should I enter in Compare sets?

Accepted Answer

Every item that could have been in any of your lists, measured the same way, not the union of the lists you drew.

Question 6

How do I cite InteractiVenn?

Accepted Answer

Heberle H, Meirelles GV, da Silva FR, Telles GP, Minghim R. InteractiVenn: a web-based tool for the analysis of sets through Venn diagrams. BMC Bioinformatics 16:169 (2015). doi:10.1186/s12859-015-0611-3

Question 7

Can InteractiVenn test whether an overlap is significant?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Compare sets uses the hypergeometric test (the same p-value as a one-sided Fisher's exact test) for each pair of sets, with Holm, Bonferroni or Benjamini-Hochberg correction. It needs the total number of items that could have been in either list.

Question 8

How many sets can I compare?

Accepted Answer

Up to 16 lists: Venn diagrams for 2 to 6 sets, UpSet plots for up to 16 sets and area-proportional Euler diagrams for 2 to 16 sets (7 or more when they share few regions).

Question 9

Can I use InteractiVenn for anything besides biology?

Accepted Answer

Yes, for any lists of items: survey answers, literature search results, reading lists, product features across plans, customers across channels or duplicates between spreadsheets. The page "What you can do with InteractiVenn" has examples.

Question 10

Is InteractiVenn free, and does it need an account?

Accepted Answer

It is free and needs no account, installation or upload. It runs in your browser.

Question 11

Can I load an OTU table or an intensity matrix?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Open it as a values table, then use "Make one set per column" in the values bar: choose the columns and a rule such as "present" or "at least 10". Columns written by DESeq2, edgeR, limma, proteomics tools or Seurat are recognised by name and proposed as padj < 0.05 and |log2FC| ≥ 1; nothing is made until you press the button.

Question 12

Can I make a link to a diagram from a script or notebook?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Export > Copy link as code gives Python, R or shell lines that build a link from your lists, using only the language's standard library. Everything the link needs is in the text after the #, which is never sent to a server. There is no API.

Question 13

Can I use InteractiVenn in class?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The page For teaching explains intersection, union, difference and complement with a diagram and an example for each, has a counts-only exercise for students, and offers made-up datasets that work in File › Examples. Nothing is stored, so it runs on a school laptop or a phone.