Create or import a wallet

Making a new wallet and writing down its recovery phrase, adding your own dice randomness, importing phrases and keys from other wallets, and where AirWallet's phrases restore.

If you're setting up an offline signer, do this on the offline device, after it's offline for good. A wallet you create there is made there, and its keys never exist anywhere else.

#Create a wallet

1. Tap Create a wallet (on the first screen) or + → Create a wallet.
2. Choose what to make:
   • Recovery phrase (recommended): one set of words for every coin AirWallet supports.
   • Solana keypair, Bitcoin key or Ethereum key: a single private key for one chain.
   • Monero wallet (Polyseed): 16 words, Monero only, the seed Feather, Cake Wallet and ANON use.
3. For a recovery phrase, AirWallet shows Write down your recovery phrase. Tap the words to show them, write them on paper in order, then tap I wrote them down. (A single key shows Back up this private key instead: write it down or keep a copy somewhere safe and offline.)

To see the words again later: ⋯ → Export private key.

#Your recovery phrase

The words are the wallet. Whoever has them has the money, on any device, and with them you can get it back if you lose this one.

• Write them on paper (or stamp them in metal), in order, and keep that somewhere safe and private.
• Never take a photo or a screenshot of them, and never put them in a cloud note or a synced password manager. Apps that read photos steal them.
• Nobody from AirWallet will ever ask for them.

A new recovery phrase is 24 words. Zcash's wallet standard (ZIP 315) calls for 24, and Zodl restores only 24-word phrases, so that's the default. AirWallet imports 12-, 15-, 18-, 21- and 24-word phrases from other wallets, and a 12-word phrase can also be made from dice (below).

#Your own randomness

AirWallet makes new keys from your device's secure random generator, mixed with a second, independent one where there is one: on a computer, the operating system's; on Android, the system's own (Java's SecureRandom). A flaw in either one alone can't make your keys guessable. (The Chrome extension has only the browser's generator.)

If you'd rather add randomness of your own:

1. + → Create a wallet → Your own randomness…
2. Roll a die and type the numbers (1 to 6), or type anything random.
3. Tap Create recovery phrase.

What you type is mixed with the device's own randomness, so the phrase is at least as random as without it. Nothing you type is kept.

#Words from your dice alone

With exactly 50 rolls or exactly 99 rolls, a box appears: Use only my dice (12 words) or Use only my dice (24 words). Tick it and the words come from your dice alone, by SeedSigner's method (the SHA-256 of the rolls as you typed them). So SeedSigner, or any tool that does the same, gives you the same words, and you can check them there.

Roll a real die and type each roll as it lands. Rolls that don't look like real dice rolls (too few different faces, or a repeating pattern) are refused. More: How keys are made.

#Import a wallet

1. Tap Import a recovery phrase or key (on the first screen) or + → Import.
2. Paste or type what you have. Several at once is fine. You can also pick backup files with Files… or Folder….
3. Tap Import.

What it takes:

• Recovery phrases from Phantom, MetaMask, Sparrow, Ledger, Trezor, Cake or Zodl.
• A passphrase. If you set one with your words (a "25th word"), open A passphrase too? and type it. Leave it empty otherwise: each passphrase opens a different wallet, so a typo opens an empty one. Check that the addresses match the ones you know.
• Private keys of any chain: for example a Solana private key exported from Phantom, a Bitcoin key (WIF) or an Ethereum key.
• A Monero Polyseed (16 words, from Feather, Cake or ANON).
• AirWallet backups, from Settings → Back up all keys or the automatic backups.

The import box doesn't use spellcheck, autocomplete or autocorrect, and it's cleared afterwards. On Android, the keyboard learns nothing typed in the app.

After a phrase import, an everyday wallet looks for other accounts on the same phrase that have been used (Phantom's and MetaMask's further accounts, more Bitcoin addresses, Ledger Live's and MyEtherWallet's account layouts) and offers to add them.

#Monero and Zcash after an import

An imported phrase doesn't say when the wallet was made, so AirWallet starts scanning Monero and Zcash from around the import, and marks it. If the wallet had Monero or Zcash before that, scan further back: ⋯ → Monero: scan from a date… or ⋯ → Zcash: scan from a date…

#Watch a wallet instead

If the keys are on another device (your offline signer, or a hardware wallet), don't import them. Watch the wallet instead: see Set up an offline signer.

#Where AirWallet's phrase restores

AirWallet's recovery phrases are the standard kind (BIP-39), and it uses the accounts other wallets look for. Under the words, Restoring it elsewhere shows the wallet's fingerprint and each account's derivation path.

A few things to know:

• Zcash: Zodl restores only 24-word phrases. Restoring elsewhere asks for a birthday: the date the wallet was made, which the words sheet shows (or any earlier date).
• Monero: for Monero-only wallets (Feather, Cake Wallet, Monerujo, the Monero GUI), the words sheet also has Monero: 25 words for other Monero wallets, with the restore height. They open the same Monero wallet.
• Single keys: a Solana keypair imports into Phantom as a private key; an Ethereum key into MetaMask through Import account.
• Zcash t1 vanity addresses: their keys aren't in your words. Back each one up separately, from the words sheet's The private keys, one per chain.

#Back up

Your words are the backup that matters. On top of them:

• Settings → Back up all keys saves every wallet in one file, encrypted with a password you choose.
• Settings → Automatic backups writes an encrypted copy of every wallet, watched ones too, whenever your wallets change and every week, never over an older file. On a computer they go to Documents/AirWallet backups; on Android, to a folder you pick once. Only your backup password opens them, on any copy of AirWallet (Import). Not available in the Chrome extension.

More: Backups and recovery.

Next: Set up an offline signer.