Locked out of encrypted notes

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With end-to-end encryption on, your notes are encrypted with a key derived from your password. Resetting your password does not reset that key, so after a reset Notate asks for your 24-word recovery phrase before it can unlock your notes.

This is the phrase you were shown and asked to save when you turned encryption on.

Unlocking after a password reset

  1. Reset your password as normal, from the sign-in screen
  2. Sign in with the new password
  3. When Notate asks, enter your 24-word recovery phrase

Your notes unlock, and the key is re-secured under your new password. You will not be asked for the phrase again unless you reset your password another time.

Enter the words in order, separated by spaces. They are the only thing checked, so capitalization does not matter.

If you do not have the phrase

There is no way back into the encrypted notes, and that is by design rather than a policy we can make an exception to. The key never leaves your devices and Notate never holds a copy, so there is nothing on our side to recover with. Support cannot unlock them.

What you can still do:

  • Check a device that is still signed in. A device that never signed out still holds the unlocked key, and your notes are readable there. Copy anything important out before signing out of it or reinstalling.
  • Look on disk. Notes are stored as markdown files in your folders. A device that has them decrypted locally has readable files you can copy.

If neither applies, the encrypted notes cannot be recovered. You can turn encryption off and start again, but the existing encrypted content stays unreadable.

Keeping this from happening

  • Store the phrase somewhere you will still have it if you lose the device, such as a password manager or on paper somewhere safe
  • Do not keep it only inside Notate, where it is unreachable in exactly the situation you would need it

Changing your password while signed in does not require the phrase and does not change it. Only a reset, where you have lost access to the old password, triggers this.