Resetting your password

1. Is Termiyo still unlocked on a computer? That includes a Mac where Use Touch ID still opens it. Save everything before it locks: open Settings → Backup → Export, type a new passphrase of twelve characters or more twice (it is not your master password, so keep it somewhere safe) and press Export the vault. Then install Termiyo on another computer, create a new vault there and bring the file in: Settings → Backup → Restore, type that passphrase, press Choose an archive…, pick the file, then press Restore everything. If this is your only computer, export all the same, then write to us: we will tell you how to start a new vault on it, because Termiyo has no button for that yet.
2. An older backup? A file made by Export or by a scheduled backup opens with the passphrase it was made with, not with your master password. Restore it the same way, into a new vault.
3. Neither? Then the encrypted data cannot be recovered, by us or by anyone. Write to us and we will tell you how to start a new vault on the computer that holds the locked one, because Termiyo has no button for that yet. We can also change the plan on your account, back to Free for example. What we cannot do is sign in for you or set a new password.

Your master password never leaves your machine. It derives the key that encrypts your hosts, identities and keys, and the key that opens the sealed bundle holding every vault key. What the server stores is ciphertext and a value that proves you know the password without revealing it.

That is the whole point of the design, and it has one unavoidable consequence: nobody at Termiyo can reset your password for you, because nobody at Termiyo can decrypt anything. A link that set a new password would give you an account you could sign in to, containing data you could never read again.

This page is about a lost password, which is the one nothing can fix. Losing the authenticator app that shows your two-factor code is a smaller problem with a way out, and it is worth knowing which of the two you are having.

One of the ten recovery codes shown when you turned two-factor on signs you in, in the same box the six digits go in. So does any machine still signed in: it keeps its session, and Settings → Account there will turn two-factor off for your password — no code needed, which is the whole point of that exit. If both are gone the account door stays shut, because there is nothing here that could open it. Your vault is a separate matter, and it stays readable on any machine that already holds it.

Turn on scheduled backups (Settings → Backup) and keep the passphrase somewhere that is not only in your head. It is the one thing that turns this page from bad news into an inconvenience.

How Termiyo protects your data