Since the release of Envoy v1.1.0, as well as being the easiest way to manage your Passport, Envoy is now a standalone Bitcoin mobile wallet. Now, anyone with an Android or iOS phone can enjoy the simplest Bitcoin wallet experience ever!
There are a number of ways you can setup your Envoy wallet. Newer users will love our simple and automatic setup and backup process, whereas more advanced users might prefer to the manual solution to manage their seed words and wallet data. We have everyone covered.
Upon launch, Envoy only allows for a single mobile wallet per app. We plan to expand this in a later release, but for now, if you want to replace your Envoy Wallet, please follow these steps.
Since Envoy can now store Bitcoin directly on your phone, it is recommended to enable PIN or Biometric authentication from the Settings.
+
in the top right corner of the Accounts screen, then tap Set Up Envoy Wallet.Envoy users with their own Bitcoin node can connect to it at this stage by tapping 'Add Node' from the top right corner of the screen.
After making your privacy setting choice, tap Continue.
Choose how you would like to create your Envoy Mobile Wallet. Here you can choose between the following two options:
If you have an existing Envoy Magic Backup, it will be automatically detected and recovered for you at this step.
Android backups are completed automatically, every 24 hours, usually when the device is on charge at night. But to ensure no data is lost after initial set up, it is advised to manually create the initial backup from your device's settings. These steps should be completed only once, immediately after Envoy wallet creation.
As there are many different flavors of Android, the following steps may not exactly match your OS, but the basic steps should be similar.
Here’s how Envoy Magic Backups work.
1. Envoy generates a Bitcoin seed for your Envoy wallet and stores it on your phone’s secure element.
2. Since most users have iCloud Keychain or Android Auto-Backup enabled, the seed is automatically synced to your other iOS or Android devices – fully end-to-end encrypted, without needing to give Envoy permission to access your iCloud or Google account.
3. Envoy then creates a backup file containing your app settings, account labels, and other non-sensitive app data. We call this the Envoy Backup File. The backup file is end-to-end encrypted with your Envoy seed, meaning Foundation can never see the contents. It does not contain your seed words.
4. The fully encrypted Envoy Backup File is uploaded to Foundation’s servers, alongside a hash of the seed (a cryptographic representation of the seed, not the seed itself!) so that we can ensure no one else can attempt to download your backup without proving knowledge of your seed phrase.
5. There is no Foundation user account – all you need is access to your Apple or Google account and you’re all set.
iCloud protects your information with end-to-end encryption, which provides the highest level of data security. Your data is protected with a key that's made from information unique to your device, and combined with your device passcode, which only you know. No one else can access or read this data, either in transit or storage. Learn more here.
Android preserves app data by uploading it to the user's Google Drive—where it's protected by the user's Google account credentials. The backup is end-to-end encrypted on devices running Android 9 or higher using the device's pin, pattern, or password. Learn more here.
If you lose your phone or delete the Envoy app, restoring your Envoy Wallet takes only a few seconds with our Magic Backup. Here's how you do that:
That's it!
Here's what happens under the hood:
The following setup options are for users that do not wish to leverage automatic cloud backups and would prefer to manage and/or import their own seed words to Envoy.
+
in the top right corner of the Accounts screen, then tap Set Up Envoy Wallet.Envoy users with their own Bitcoin node can connect to it at this stage by tapping 'Add Node' from the top right corner of the screen.
After making your privacy setting choice, tap Continue.
Tap Manually Configure Seed Words.
The next screen asks if you want to have Envoy generate a new seed, or import your own. Ensure you are in a private location, then tap Generate New Seed.
Carefully write down your seed words.
It is recommended that you periodically update your manual Envoy backup file to ensure the latest state of your wallets, including accounts, labels and settings, are saved.
+
in the top right corner of the Accounts screen, then tap Set Up Envoy Wallet.Envoy users with their own Bitcoin node can connect to it at this stage by tapping 'Add Node' from the top right corner of the screen.
After making your privacy setting choice, tap Continue.
Tap Manually Configure Seed Words.
Tap Import Seed.
Choose the length of the seed to be imported. This can be 12 or 24 words.
Choosing either of the manual seed management setups puts you in full control of all data. Your seed words should be stored somewhere secure using a medium that is resistant to theft, fire and water etc.
Your backup file is encrypted with your seed words. It contains app settings, account info and transaction labels, and can be stored anywhere you like. This could be any combination of your phone, a personal cloud server, or on something physical like a microSD card or USB drive.
If you are not a Magic Backup user, there are two ways to recover your Envoy Wallet. The first is to import your seed words and backup file as listed above. This is useful in a scenario where you have completely lost access to Envoy, eg losing your phone.
If you still have access to the phone running Envoy, but want to easily migrate your wallet to a new phone for example, you can follow these steps.
Completing these steps will permanently remove your wallet information from your phone, your chosen cloud storage (if you have one), as well as any encrypted wallet data stored by Foundation. This action will not remove any connected Passport accounts.