Your Passphrase and Recovery Phrase

Two things keep your content private: your passphrase and your recovery phrase. They are not the same, and confusing them is the most common mistake new members make. This article makes the difference clear.

Your passphrase: the everyday key

Your passphrase is what you type to unlock LivingWill. Behind the scenes, your passphrase is run through a deliberately slow process called Argon2id key derivation. In plain language, that turns your passphrase into a strong encryption key while making it very hard for an attacker to guess by brute force.

Everything sensitive you store, your will, letters, videos, and vault items, is encrypted with a key tied to that passphrase, on your own device, before it ever reaches us. That is why we can store your content but never read it. We hold scrambled data only.

Choose a passphrase that is long, unique to LivingWill, and memorable to you. Length matters more than symbols. A short string of unrelated words you will actually remember beats a clever short password you will forget.

Your recovery phrase: the backup key

When you set up your account, the app generates a 24 word recovery phrase. These words come from a standard word list (the BIP-39 list), arranged in a specific order that only you receive.

This phrase is your one and only backup. If you forget your passphrase, the recovery phrase is what restores access to your encrypted content. Without it, that content cannot be recovered by anyone, including us.

Why we cannot reset either one

This is the part that surprises people, so we want to be direct about it.

We cannot reset your passphrase, and we cannot recover your content without your recovery phrase. This is not a support limitation we plan to fix. It is the entire point. If we could reset your access, then so could anyone who pressured, tricked, or compromised our staff or systems. The only way to guarantee that your private letters and documents stay private, even from us, is to make sure we never hold a key to them. That guarantee has a cost, and the cost is that you are responsible for these two secrets.

How to store your recovery phrase well

Treat the recovery phrase like the deed to your home.

• Write it on paper, by hand. Do not store it only in a notes app, email, or photo.
• Keep it somewhere protected from fire and water, such as a small safe or a sealed envelope in a secure place.
• Consider a second copy in a separate location, like a trusted relative's safe or a bank deposit box.
• Never type it into any website except LivingWill's official recovery screen, and never share it with anyone who contacts you claiming to be support. We will never ask for it.

For families who want a more advanced backup, LivingWill also supports splitting the recovery phrase into shares so that no single person holds the whole thing, and a defined number of trusted people together can reconstruct it. That is optional and covered separately.

Quick summary

Your passphrase unlocks LivingWill day to day. Your recovery phrase is the only lifeline if you forget the passphrase. We can reset neither, on purpose, because that restriction is exactly what keeps your content yours. Write the recovery phrase down today, before you store anything important.