Private Vault & your recovery key
The notes only you can read — and how to keep that access safe.
What is the Private Vault?
The Private Vault is end-to-end encryption for your most sensitive notes. When you make a note private, its content is encrypted on your device with a key derived from your vault passphrase — a passphrase only you know, that never reaches our servers. We store only unreadable ciphertext.
The result: we cannot read your vault notes, even if we wanted to, and neither could anyone who stole our entire database. It's true zero-knowledge, opt-in one note at a time. The rest of your notes keep working exactly as before.
Two things keep your vault safe
1. Your vault passphrase
Separate from your login password. You enter it once per session to unlock the vault. We never see it and can never reset it.
2. Your recovery key
A one-time code shown when you set up the vault. It's your only way back in if you ever forget your passphrase.
Why we can't recover it for you
Because your vault key never reaches us, we have no copy of it. That's exactly what makes the vault private — but it also means if you lose both your passphrase and your recovery key, your vault notes cannot be recovered by anyone, including us. This is the cost of true zero-knowledge, and it's the same trade-off password managers and crypto wallets make.
How to store your recovery key
Treat it like the spare key to a safe. Good places to keep it:
- ✓ A password manager (1Password, Bitwarden, etc.) — the simplest safe option for most people.
- ✓ Printed on paper, stored somewhere physically safe — a drawer at home, a folder, a safe.
- ✓ A second copy in a different place, in case the first is lost or damaged.
Where not to keep it:
- ✕ Inside NoteGod itself — if you're locked out, you can't open the note holding the key.
- ✕ A plain email or chat to yourself — those accounts can be breached, and the key would be sitting in plaintext.
- ✕ A screenshot in your camera roll if it syncs to a cloud you don't fully trust.
If you forget your passphrase
Open a vault note, choose "Forgot your passphrase?", enter your recovery key, and set a new passphrase. Your notes stay intact — only the lock changes. After that, save your recovery key somewhere safe again if you moved it.
Good to know
- The vault is opt-in, per note. You choose which notes are private with the lock button.
- Vault note titles and tags stay visible — only the content is encrypted. Keep sensitive details in the body, not the title.
- Vault notes can't be shared with a public link or saved with the Web Clipper.
- The vault is personal, so it stays out of shared projects. NoteGod won't let you make a note private inside a shared project, move a vault note into one, or invite someone to a project that still holds vault notes. And even if a collaborator did open one, they couldn't read it — without your passphrase, decryption fails and they see a locked (or "could not decrypt") notice, never your content.
- The vault auto-locks after a period of inactivity and whenever you reload, so an unattended session won't stay open.
Want the technical details? See our Security page.