Where things are

Three locations, and the split between them is ours versus yours, not programs versus data.

The program

Replaced wholesale when you update. The updater may only ever write inside it.

macOS	/Applications/vPinOps.app
Windows	C:\vPinOps\app\
Linux	~/vpinops/app/

Your content

Never touched by an update. Visual Pinball lives in here too, because it is yours.

macOS	~/vPinOpsData/
Windows	C:\vPinOpsData\
Linux	~/vPinOpsData/

tables/                one folder per table
pinmame/               the shared ROM fallback
.inbox/                tables sent from another device land here
visualpinball/         VPX's own settings (VPinballX.ini)
visualpinball/app/     Visual Pinball itself

The dot in .inbox is load-bearing

The library scan goes several levels deep and skips any folder whose name begins with a dot. Rename it and a half-finished upload shows up on the wheel as a table you cannot play.

Your settings

macOS / Linux	~/.vpinops/
Windows	%USERPROFILE%\.vpinops\

File
config.json	paths, screens, the password you set
last-run.log	read this first when anything is wrong
remote-password	the generated OpsLink fallback password

Visual Pinball’s own settings

macOS	~/vPinOpsData/visualpinball/VPinballX.ini
Windows	C:\vPinOpsData\visualpinball\VPinballX.ini
Linux	~/vPinOpsData/visualpinball/VPinballX.ini

Those are the defaults: it is wherever VPX settings points in Settings, and vPinOps tells Visual Pinball to use that file every time it launches a table. vPinOps does not write this file until you launch a table.

These are suggestions, not requirements

Settings shows the suggested layout with a button that fills the boxes in. Tables can live somewhere else, a NAS or an external drive, as long as what is there is one folder per table, the way Visual Pinball lays it out. A folder of loose .vpx files is not a library; import those one at a time. The folder layout

Updating

Quit vPinOps, replace the program folder with the new one, start it again. Your content and your config are in the other two places and are not involved.

On macOS, expect to approve it again in System Settings → Privacy & Security, the same as the first install. The steps.

Uninstalling

Quit it and delete the program folder. Your tables are still yours — delete the content folder too if you want them gone, and the settings folder if you want the settings gone.