Face ID to open quickly, a recovery phrase to get back in

Face ID, for one vault

Face ID is optional. You can turn it on for one vault and open that vault without your pattern or PIN. It works for at most one vault on purpose: if Face ID could open several, using it would show that the others exist.

The Face ID key stays in your iPhone’s Keychain behind biometric access and never leaves this iPhone. If you’d rather your face never opens a vault, leave Face ID off.

Your 12-word recovery phrase

OwlVault gives you a recovery phrase of 12 words. It protects your vault’s key separately from your pattern or PIN, and it’s the only way to open your vault on a new iPhone, where the key from your old device doesn’t exist.

• It’s shown only once, so write it down when you see it.
• We don’t store it and can’t recover it.
• Without it, a vault can’t be opened on another iPhone.

Moving to a new iPhone

There are two ways. Both need your recovery phrase.

1. From your iPhone backup. Restore your iCloud or computer backup on the new iPhone, open OwlVault, choose Restore with recovery phrase, and set a new pattern or PIN.
2. From an OwlVault backup file. On the old iPhone, export an encrypted backup (a .owlbackup file) to Files or iCloud Drive. Import it in OwlVault on the new iPhone and enter your recovery phrase.

Backups stay encrypted the whole way. Exporting a backup works on every plan, including Free.

Keep the phrase safe

• Write it on paper and keep it somewhere you’d keep a passport.
• Don’t take a screenshot of it and don’t email it, not even to us.
• Don’t store it inside OwlVault: you’ll need it exactly when you can’t open the vault.

If you lose the paper, open the vault and create a new phrase in Settings, confirming with your pattern or PIN. The old phrase stops working, but backup files you exported earlier still need the old one.

If you lose both

If you forget your pattern or PIN and also lose your recovery phrase, nobody can open your vault — not even us. There’s no reset email, because there’s no account. That’s what “no back door” means in practice. More on how the keys work.