Your 12 words

The 12 words are the key to your account. Why they matter, where to find them, how to keep them safe, and adding a sign-in as a second way back.

Why they matter

Your account is not a password kept by someone else. It is a key kept on your phone. Your 12 words are that key, written as words.

With the 12 words, you can get your account back on a new phone: your name, your beans and your trust.
Without them, a lost or broken phone can mean a lost account.
The key stays on the phone that holds it. It is not copied into your phone's backups, so a new phone, even an iPhone restored from a backup of your old one, needs your 12 words or a linked sign-in account (see "Getting your account back").
Anyone who has your 12 words can use your account. Never share them, never type them anywhere except the BeanPool app or your own community's BeanPool web app, and never send them in a message. Nobody from BeanPool or your community will ever ask for them.

Write them down

Write the 12 words on paper, in order, and check the spelling.
Keep the paper somewhere safe, away from your phone.
A photo or screenshot of the words is easy for someone else to find. Paper is safer.
While the phone app shows your 12 words, or while you type them, it blocks screenshots and screen recordings of that screen: the phone refuses the screenshot, or the picture comes out blank. Nothing stops a photo of the screen taken with another phone.
Copy puts the words on your phone's clipboard for one minute. Then the app clears them, if the clipboard still holds them. If you leave the app first, it clears them when you come back. Something you copied since is left alone.
In the web app, the copy clears after a minute if you stay on that screen. On an iPhone or iPad, in Safari or in Firefox, the browser lets the app clear it only when you tap or press a key, so it clears at your first tap or key press after the minute. If you leave that screen or switch to another app or tab first, the app can't tell whether you copied something else, so it leaves your clipboard alone: copy something else over the words.
If your phone has no screen lock, anyone holding it can open your 12 words, and the app says so under them. A PIN, pattern, password, fingerprint or face lock, set in your phone's settings, keeps them safer.

Your recovery kit

The recovery kit is one printable page: your 12 words in order, your community's name and address, the date you made it, and the steps to get back in on a phone and in a web browser. It does not say whose account it is. It is optional: you can carry on without it.

On the phone: next to your 12 words (on Safety Backup when you join, and in Settings), tap Print your recovery kit to print it, or Save as PDF to make a PDF and choose where it goes. Before saving, the app warns: "Keep this file off cloud backups and chats. Anyone who has it can sign in as you." The phone deletes its own copy of the PDF afterwards.
In the web app: next to your 12 words (when you join, and in Settings under View Recovery Phrase), click Print or save your recovery kit. The app warns: "Keep this page or file off cloud backups and chats. Anyone who has it can sign in as you." Click Continue for your browser's print dialog. To keep a PDF instead of paper, choose Save as PDF there.
Keep the page as you would the words: anyone who has it can sign in as you.

Where to see them again

Open Settings with the sliders button at the top of the screen. Then either:

Under Account & Identity, tap View Recovery Phrase. Type CONFIRM, tap Show Recovery Phrase, and pass your phone's lock screen check.
Or tap Account Protection, then Show My 12 Recovery Words, and pass your phone's lock screen check. Tap Hide when you are done.

Either way, the words also hide when you leave that screen, or leave the app for 15 seconds or more, and the phone asks again next time. A lock screen check that takes more than two minutes shows nothing: tap again.

A phone restored with a sign-in account gets your 12 words back only if that sign-in account was linked from a phone that had them, on an up-to-date app. Otherwise the phone has no copy of them: they can't be rebuilt from a sign-in. View Recovery Phrase is still there, and says No copy on this phone yet. On that phone a linked sign-in account is how you get back in, so keep one linked under Account Protection.

Put your 12 words back on this phone

If this phone has no copy of your 12 words, and you have them written down, you can add them:

Open Settings. Under Account & Identity, tap View Recovery Phrase. (Or, in Account Protection, tap Show My 12 Recovery Words.) On a phone with no copy, either one opens Add your 12 words to this phone.
Type the 12 words in order, or tap Paste. Capitals and extra spaces don't matter. A word that is not on the list of recovery words is marked as you type.
Tap Add these words.

Your phone checks that the words belong to your account, the same check as Check your 12 words for owners. They are not sent anywhere. If they belong to a different account, nothing changes and the app says so. Once they are added, View Recovery Phrase shows them, in every community on this phone.

If you joined the global community with 12 words

You can join the global community with 12 secret words alone, without a Google, Apple or Facebook account (see "Joining BeanPool"). If that made you a new account, your 12 words are your only way back in. No copy of your account is kept anywhere but on your phone, and nobody can reset them: not BeanPool, and not the community. If you lose them and your phone, the account is gone for good. (If you joined with the account you already had, a sign-in you linked in another community still brings it back there.)

The app says so at Safety Backup. After you join, a card on Home says it again (in the web app it also shows at the top of the other screens, except the map): Your account has one way back: your 12 words. Check you still have them, or add a sign-in. It never stops you doing anything.

✕ puts the card away. It comes back once after your first post and once after a week, then stays only in Settings, under Account Protection.
Show my 12 words opens Account Protection, where you can see them again.
In Account Protection, I still have my 12 words puts the card away for good. Add a sign-in stays there.

An account made with 12 words also starts slower than one made with a sign-in, for its first week. See "Reporting a problem" for its limits, and why.

Adding a sign-in later

You can add a sign-in later, from any phone or browser where you are in your account, not only the one you joined on. On a phone you restored your account onto with your 12 words, open the global community in the app: the community says your account has only its 12 words, and the card and Add a sign-in appear (it can take a moment). You can't add one while your account is suspended, or if the community has closed your account (the app says so, and nothing changes). It becomes a second way back, and it lifts the 12-words limits at once.

If BeanPool's key vault already keeps a copy of your account, that copy is a way back too. The app then doesn't show the one-way-back card. Add a sign-in is still offered, quietly, in Account Protection in Settings, because it lifts the 12-words limits.

Tap Add a sign-in: on the card, or in Settings under Account Protection. At Safety Backup the button says Add a sign-in as a second way back.
Tap Continue with Google, Continue with Facebook or, on an iPhone, Continue with Apple, and sign in once. The app may ask for your phone's lock first.
Sign-in added says it worked. Your account now has the usual new-account limits, and that sign-in brings it back if you lose your phone, as for someone who joined with it. See "Getting your account back" for who can open the copy kept for it.

If the copy of your account can't be kept right then, the sign-in is still added and your limits still lift, but your 12 words stay your way back. The app says so. A sign-in account that already has another BeanPool account in the global community, or that belonged to an account the community removed, can't be added, and nothing changes.

Protect with, lower down in Account Protection under Sign-In Recovery Providers, also links a sign-in as a way back, but it leaves the 12-words limits and the card as they are. Use Add a sign-in for both.

A second way back: a sign-in account

On the phone app you can also link a Google or Facebook account (and Apple on an iPhone). If you lose your phone, that account can restore your account on a new phone, through your community's server, which keeps a locked copy for it. The people who run that server can open that copy. See "Getting your account back".

A sign-in account you link from a phone that has your 12 words keeps them too, so restoring with it gives them back. One you linked on an older version of the app brings your account back without them: under Account Protection, tap Connect again next to it and pass your phone's lock screen check to include them. Keep the paper as well.

In a web browser

On the global community, a sign-in you join with in a browser is kept as a second way back: Settings shows Sign-in recovery: connected. In a cleared or new browser, tap Already have BeanPool?, then Use my sign-in, and it brings your account back, with its 12 words (see "Using BeanPool in a web browser"). If you join there with 12 words instead, they are your only way back until you add a sign-in: a card called One way back says so, with See my 12 words and Add a sign-in, after you join and in Settings. On other communities the web app has no sign-in recovery, and your 12 words are the way back. Browsers can also clear saved data, so write the words down before you rely on the web app.

The same guide is in the BeanPool app, and works there without a connection: open Settings, then "Help & how it works" under BeanPool. Every other rule, guide and manual is in the Help Centre. Guide version 112.