From time to time, we have the annoying pleasure of upgrading to a new phone. A clean slate of tidy home screen with a minimal arrangement of icons waiting for our virtual boxes with all the junk we carry from the last phone. But even if we migrate everything as it is, with the help of an assitant even, there’s one very special thing we have to take care of moving on our own: your Monerujo monero wallets.
Here’s a detailed article about Monerujo’s security scheme with encryption and CrAzYpasses you don’t need to read for this procedure, but would explain what’s going on.
To prepare for such a thing, we need to do stuff on the old phone first.
In the old phone…
Every wallet you see in your Monerujo screen is a set of files on your phone’s internal memory.
You probably noticed they’re named after the name you chose for your wallet.
- The one without any extension is the file that cointains your latest sync checkpoint, along with all your already found transactions, the account labels, and the notes you wrote down (or not) on every transaction. You can picture it as the saved work you already did on that wallet.
- The .address.txt one is a normal, unencrypted text file with the default receiving address of the wallet. It’s just for your reference without having to open the wallet somewhere.
- The .keys file is very important. It’s like a secret, encrypted keychain generated by your mnemonic seed that contains all the keys to send, receive, see your wallet’s moneroj.
These are the files we need to carry over to your new phone. But two of them are encrypted with the super secure, aptly named Wallet Files Secure Password. This is your true wallet password, and a very strong one. The problem is it isn’t very human-friendly to write or remember, so Monerujo lets you choose your own password for opening your wallet everyday. This long password is shown in the secrets screen. So let’s go there:
Write down the Wallet Files Restore Password so we can then well, restore the wallet files on your new phone. Check it three times. Great. This is one of the two things we’ll need.
Let’s get the other one. Remember the files? We need to copy them to your new phone. There are many ways to do this:
- You can plug your phone to your computer, go to the phone’s storage. There’s going to be a monerujo folder there. Copy the files.
- You can move them with dropbox or similar. Share it from your phone’s file manager and upload. Remember they’re very well encrypted, so it’s pretty safe.
- Email them to yourself, etc.
Now that we have both things, let’s go to the new phone.
In the new phone…
Whatever method you used before, now do the reverse: paste the files with your computer on your new phone, save them from dropbox, etc. They should be put in a folder named monerujo (that’s where Monerujo will check). If the folder doesn’t exist, create it.
Install Monerujo if you haven’t already. Open it, your wallet should magically appear!
Try to open it. You’ll notice your old password doesn’t work. Don’t panic! If you want to know why just read this. We’ll need the Wallet Files Restore Password you wrote down before, remember it? Enter it in the password field. Respect caps, no need to respect spaces, those are for human-friendliness:
If you wrote it right, it should magically open. Well done! All your transactions and notes should be there, just as if you opened your Monerujo on your old phone.
Now let’s do an extra step for convenience. On the top right corner there’s the option to show the wallet’s secrets. They should be the same ones you saw on your old phone. Click on the top right icon again, and you’ll be able to choose your own, human-friendly password:
Please note that by changing the short password you change the crazy long one, so you’ll have to write that one down again. Do you remember that the long one was created using the short one and the device special secret? Now that you have a new device and a new short password, the long one changed as well.
That’s it! If you close the wallet and try to open it again, your new password should work perfectly.
Extra bonus h4x0r points…
If you try to open it with the long, crazy secure password, it will always work. So if you forget your chosen password, you could always use the long one for login, then pick a new one. That’s why it is important to keep it somewhere safe and secret. Anyone with access to it and your phone can unlock your wallet and do whatever he/she desires with it.Your mnemonic seed is the single most important piece of information regarding your wallet, but this crazy password comes a close second. Be safe out there.
As always, in case of need write to help@monerujo.io and we’ll do our best to help. Monerujo is free, open source software created by love, so any donations are always welcomed. Send your hard earned moneroj to:
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