How do I recover my profile if I lose access to Fedi?

Fedi supports two backup options that can be used to recover your profile, including your funds and chat history, if you lose access to your device: Personal & Social. This article covers Personal backup & recovery.

• Personal Backup – To back up your profile using Personal backup, navigate to Settings > General > Personal Backup. The 12 words shown act as a password to recover your Fedi profile. Write them down in order using a physical pen & paper and secure them offline. Never store them digitally or share them with anyone – including us. Our team will never ask you for your recovery words under any circumstances. Once you've written them down, tap I've stored it safely.
• Personal Recovery – To recover your profile, install the latest version of the Fedi app and select Restore access on the initial screen. Next, tap Start personal recovery and enter your 12 recovery words in order. Once finished, tap Recover wallet > Okay. On the next screen, tap Transfer existing wallet > Continue and select the device listed. Don't worry if you do not recognize the device ID as it is derived under the hood – but regardless, there should only be one device listed.

If you lost access to your device and are installing Fedi on a new device, this recovery process transfers your profile to the current device and locks it on the original. Though we realize it is a bit unintuitive, this exact process also applies to uninstalling & reinstalling Fedi on the same device.

Even if you simply delete the Fedi app and decide to re-download it later on the same phone, you will still need to recover your account via this process given that reinstalling Fedi on the same device is functionally the same as installing it for the first time on a brand new device.

Also note that the Fedi app only supports recovering Fedi profiles, meaning you must enter a 12-word seed phrase that was generated by Fedi – not by any other app or provider. Attempts to enter recovery phrases generated elsewhere will not work as this functionality is not supported.

Once you have recovered your Fedi account, your entire chat history will be restored, but you will have to manually rejoin all of the communities and federations you previously belonged to – meaning that you will need to have the invite code for those communities and federations.

Your individual wallet balances will be restored as you rejoin each federation, but any transaction history will unfortunately be lost as that is not yet recoverable. As you rejoin federations, please take care not to select the Recover from scratch option unless explicitly instructed by the Fedi Council.