Recovery and data safety

If you have just lost access to something, start with the first three questions. Fuller documentation is being written and will appear here.

I forgot my password. What do I do?

Your notes on disk are untouched, because the password protects only the encrypted copy on the server. On the sign-in form, choose “Forgot your password?”, set a new password by email, and then answer the recovery-kit question. With the kit, your vaults are re-sealed under the new password and nothing else changes. Without it, each vault begins a fresh encrypted copy beside the old one, and nothing is deleted.

I lost a device. What do I do?

Set up a replacement and sign in with your email and password. Then open Settings → Sync. Under Vaults to sync, press Recover beside each vault the server holds and choose where it goes. Under Devices, find the lost device and retire it, so that it can no longer reach the server.

Someone else knows my password. What do I do?

Change it, under Settings → Sync → Password → Change. Every other device is signed out at once and needs the new password to sign in again; the device you change it on stays signed in. A sync server that sends mail emails you whenever the password changes, so a change you did not make does not go unnoticed.

Sometimes a password change ends by showing you twenty-four words. That happens when another device had already made your account’s recovery kit and the kit on the device you are changing it on had not reached the server. The change adopts the account’s kit, and the words it shows are the account’s real ones. Save them as you saved the first set.

If you cannot sign in because someone changed it before you did, reset it with “Forgot your password?” on the sign-in form, and change the password of your email account too.

What is my recovery kit, and where do I find it?

Slate makes a recovery kit for your account and shows it to you once: twenty-four words, and a small file holding the same thing. It is a spare key to the encrypted copies of your vaults on the sync server. Keep it somewhere your laptop is not: on paper, in a password manager, in a safe.

The kit is usually made when you register. If the server asks you to confirm your email first, it is made the first time you sign in afterwards. If your account has no kit when you turn sync on for a vault, Slate makes one then and asks you to save it first; when you have, turn sync on again.

You can see it again at any time under Settings → Sync → Recovery kit, while you are signed in and unlocked.

Are my notes safe if sync fails, or the app’s data is lost?

Your notes are ordinary .md files in a folder you chose. The app’s database and the sync server are caches: both can be rebuilt from your files and the sync record. When sync fails, sync stops. It does not change the files on disk.

There is one exception, and it matters. Note history is a durable record, not a cache. It holds the earlier versions of a note that the file itself no longer shows, so nothing can rebuild it from your files. It is kept on the device that wrote it, and a plain copy of your notes folder does not carry it. A vault export can carry it: the export asks whether to include history, and it chooses no answer for you. Only an export made with history holds it.

What happens when I sign out, or delete my account?

Signing out ends your session on the server and clears your keys from that device. Deleting your account erases your account, your devices and your encrypted notes from the server. The privacy page names the two things the server keeps on purpose, and how long a backup can still hold a deleted account. The server refuses to delete an account while a password reset on it is less than a day old, or while the account is suspended.

Neither signing out nor deleting touches your notes or their history. Both also leave one thing on the device: each synced vault’s sync record, which is the app’s own bookkeeping of what it has synced. That is expected. After signing out, the record is what lets you sign in again and turn sync back on for the same vault. After deleting your account, there is no account left for it to carry on with.

Settings → Sync → Start sync over clears it and keeps your notes. Use it when you want this device to join the server as a new device, instead of carrying that record back.

How can I check a vault myself?

Slate can inspect a vault without changing anything in it: run slate doctor --vault ~/notes and it reports whether your files and the app’s databases on this device agree. The checks that need your password are skipped unless you pipe it in: echo "$SLATE_PASSWORD" | slate doctor --vault ~/notes.

Where do I get help?

There is no support desk: Slate is a personal project. The address on the security page reaches the person who builds it.

This page is kept true to the code. If something here does not match what the app does, the page is the bug. Please report it.