# Recovery phrase

> Your recovery phrase is 24 words. It's the only way to get your data back if you lose your phone. Write it down on paper. Keep it somewhere safe. We can't recover it for you.

Because your entries are locked with a key that lives only on your phone, losing your phone normally means losing access to your past entries.

The recovery phrase is the way around that. It's 24 short words that, when entered into a fresh install of Open Heart, rebuild your key. After that, your past entries can be unlocked again.

## How to generate one

1. Open the app, go to **Settings → Recovery phrase**
2. Tap **Generate phrase**
3. The app shows you 24 words on screen
4. Write them down on paper, in order
5. Tap **I've written it down**

That's it. You can come back to Settings later to view the phrase again.

## Where to keep it

Treat the phrase like a passport or a spare front-door key. A few principles:

- **Paper, not screenshots.** A photo on your phone goes wherever your phone goes — including a thief's hands. A piece of paper in a drawer at home is more secure than a photo on the device you might lose.
- **Two copies in two places.** One at home, one with someone you trust or in a safe deposit box.
- **Don't email it to yourself.** Email is searchable; if your email account is ever compromised, your phrase is too.
- **Don't put it in a chat thread.** Same reason.

## How to use it on a new phone

If you lose your old phone or get a new one:

1. Install Open Heart on the new phone
2. On the welcome screen, tap **I have a recovery phrase**
3. Type your 24 words (in any case — uppercase or lowercase doesn't matter)
4. Tap **Restore**

Within a few seconds, your old account comes back. Your past entries unlock. If you were paired with a partner, the new device can read their shared entries too.

## What gets restored

- Your past entries — the ones you wrote on the lost phone
- Your account, with its anonymous ID
- Your partner pairing, if you had one
- Your subscription (as long as you sign in with the same Apple ID or Google account)

## What doesn't get restored

- App settings on your phone (notification preferences, biometric lock, etc.) — these reset to defaults
- Your free trial — a fresh phone gets a fresh 30-day trial
- Anything that wasn't Open Heart data on the old phone (photos, contacts, and so on — that's iCloud or Google's job)

## Things that can go wrong

**"Recovery phrase must be 24 words"**
You typed too few or too many. Count them again. Spaces between every word.

**"Unknown word in recovery phrase"**
One of your words isn't on the list the app expects. Most likely it's a typo:
- *accross* should be *across*
- *untill* should be *until*
- Some words look similar — check carefully against the paper original.

**"Restored, but my entries don't appear"**
The restore worked, but the sync hasn't finished yet. Pull down to refresh on the journal tab. Wait 30 seconds and reopen the app.

## What if I lose the phrase

We can't help. There is no master key on our end. There is no support team that can reset it. This is the price of the privacy guarantee — a backdoor we could use to recover your data is a backdoor a hacker could use to read it. We don't have one, on purpose.

If you've lost both the phone and the phrase, your past entries are gone for good. You can install Open Heart again on a new phone and start fresh.

## Why 24 words from a dictionary

The 24-word format is a long-standing standard used by financial apps that protect savings accounts. It's been around for years and is well-understood. The words are easy to write down accurately by hand — much easier than a long string of random characters.

The phrase is case-insensitive and tolerant of extra whitespace. `apple banana cherry` and `   APPLE   BANANA   CHERRY   ` both work.

## Related

- [Your entries are private](/docs/features/end-to-end-encryption)
- [How your privacy works](/docs/privacy/how-encryption-works)
- [Restore from recovery phrase](/docs/troubleshooting/restore-from-recovery)