If you lose your key

Start with the part nobody wants to read. If you lose your passkey or forget your passphrase, and you do not have your recovery code, and nobody else is a member of the vault, the contents cannot be recovered. Not by you, not by support, not by anybody. There is no reset and no backup, because a key we could hand back would be a key we could use, and then the whole feature would be a story rather than a fact.

The good news is that most people who think they have lost their key have not. A refresh locks a vault, and a locked vault looks alarming; it is not the same thing at all. Work through the list below in order.

Using your recovery code#

1. 1

   Open the vault, or Settings, Security

   Either place offers the unlock.

2. 2

   Press "I lost that. Use my recovery code"

   It sits under the passkey button or the passphrase box.

3. 3

   Type the code

   Twenty four characters in six groups of four. Lowercase is fine, and so are missing dashes and stray spaces.

4. 4

   Put a working lock back on

   Once unlocked, choose Use a passkey instead or Use a passphrase instead, then New recovery code. Every vault you are in keeps working: only the wrapper around your key changes.

Nothing you type in that box is sent to us. The code is turned into a key in your own browser and either opens your vault key or does not. That is why there is no rate limit, no "checking" spinner and no hint about how close you were: we are not the one checking.

If another member still has the vault#

A vault key is per person, so a vault with two members has two independent copies of the way in. If a colleague can still open the vault, you are not locked out of the files at all. Set up a new vault key on your account, and ask them to give your new key access from their device the way they would add anybody. See Sharing a vault with somebody.

This is why a vault that matters to more than one person should have more than one member. It is the only redundancy that exists, and it costs one click while everything is still working.

Starting over with a new vault key#

Settings, Security has an option reading Forgot everything? Start over with a new vault key. It throws your key away and removes you from every vault you are in. The files stay exactly where they are and stay encrypted. If another member still holds the key, they can let your new key back in. If nobody does, those files can never be opened again, by anyone.

What is still possible in each case#

Before it happens#

• Keep the recovery code off the machine. On paper, in a safe, or in a password manager that is not unlocked by the same device you would be locked out of.
• Make a new code if you are unsure about the old one. Press New recovery code while your key is unlocked. The old code stops working the moment the new one is saved, which is the point.
• Put a second member on anything that matters. One person with a broken phone should not be able to end a project.
• Remember it is not a backup. Keep your own copy of anything you could not lose, in Files or off Nemi entirely.
• Before an account is closed, make sure somebody who is staying still holds a key to every vault that has to survive. Nobody can hand it over afterwards. See Closing your account.

What support can and cannot do#

We can help with anything around a vault: billing, storage, deleting files you can no longer open, or a screen that is behaving oddly. We cannot decrypt a vault, reset a vault key, look up a recovery code, or add you to a vault. Emailing support@nemilab.com about a lost key gets you an honest answer rather than a slow one, so it is worth spending that hour hunting for the piece of paper instead.