What is an encryption key?

🔑 Two locks, not one

Picture a bank vault.

• The front door, your password. You show identification and the guard lets you into the building.
• The deposit box, your key. Inside the vault sits a box with your things in it. The guard has no key to it. You brought that from home. Standing in the bank is not enough to open it.

⚙️ How it works

Many apps derive the key from your password by running it through a formula. We keep the two apart, which is stronger.

1. It is generated. When you sign up, your device produces a random key that no one predicted.
2. You save it. You are asked to keep it, as a file or as a string, on your device or in a password manager. We keep no copy.
3. You load it. Sign in on a new device and the notes appear locked. They open when you load the key.

One useful consequence: changing your password has no effect whatsoever on your encrypted notes.

⚠️ The real risk is losing it

Because the key does not come from your password, knowing the password is not enough to get your notes back on a new device.

• You forget the password. Reset it by email, sign in, load your saved key. The notes are fine.
• You lose the key file. You can still sign in, but every note reads as nonsense. We do not have the key, and no password can recreate it. The notes are gone.

So treat the key as a physical object. Put a copy somewhere you would put a spare house key. See recovery key.

🛡️ Why it matters that the key lives with you

Where a key is kept changes everything about who can read your notes.

• The usual arrangement. The key lives in the cloud. You sign in and the cloud unlocks your data for you, which also means the cloud can unlock it without you.
• Ours. The key lives in your hands, on a drive or in your password manager. Our servers never touch it. It is held in the browser's memory only while you are reading, and it goes when you close the tab.

❓ Questions people ask