Remem

Back up your vault

Save a passphrase-encrypted backup from Settings, keep it off your Mac, and restore it into any vault. For a This Device Only vault it is the only copy that survives losing the Mac.

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Settings → Encrypted backup saves your whole vault to one file, encrypted with a passphrase. If your vault is This Device Only, it is the only copy that survives losing your Mac: your Emergency Kit holds your Secret Key, not your items. If your vault syncs, a backup is a copy that doesn’t depend on the sync server.

What a backup holds

  • In it: every active item, with its fields, notes, tags, imported folders, favourites, logos and edit history.
  • Not in it: the Trash, your settings, your groups, your account, or your Secret Key.
  • It is a copy of today. Back up again after changes you want to keep.

Save a backup

  1. Open Settings → Encrypted backup and select Back up… to open the form.
  2. Select Generate a passphrase. Remem makes a passphrase of 8 words joined by hyphens. Generate another gives a different one; Copy copies it, and it is cleared from the clipboard on your usual timer.
  3. Write the passphrase down, for example on your Emergency Kit, and tick “I have written this passphrase down somewhere other than this device.”
  4. Select Save encrypted backup and confirm with Touch ID or your Mac password.
  5. The file is saved to Downloads as remem-backup-YYYY-MM-DD.remem-backup. An existing backup is never replaced: a second one the same day gets “ (2)” added to its name.
  6. Move it somewhere that is not your Mac: a USB drive, or a cloud drive such as iCloud Drive. That is storage, not sync; it doesn’t update by itself.

To choose your own passphrase, select Use my own passphrase instead. It must be at least 16 characters with no obvious pattern, typed twice, and you confirm you understand that a passphrase you choose may be guessable in ways Remem can’t check. Random words you use nowhere else are best.

The passphrase is the only protection

Keep the passphrase safe, and separate from the file

A backup isn’t protected by your master password or your Secret Key; it opens with its passphrase alone. Anyone who gets the file can try passphrases against it for as long as they like, which is why the generated one is long. If the passphrase is forgotten, the backup can’t be opened, by you or by anyone at Remem.

Restore a backup

  1. Set up Remem first. There is no restore on the Set up Remem screen: create a vault (or unlock your existing one) and restore into it.
  2. Open Settings → Encrypted backup and select Restore from backup… to open the form.
  3. Select Choose a backup file, enter the Backup passphrase and select Open backup.
  4. Check the preview, then select Restore these items.

Restoring adds the backup’s items to the open vault. Nothing already there is changed or removed, and items already there are skipped, so restoring the same backup twice does no harm. It works into any vault, on any server or none. Restoring doesn’t ask for Touch ID. Only restore a backup you made yourself.

What if…

“That passphrase does not open this backup, or the file has been changed since it was made.”

Check the passphrase word by word, including the hyphens between the words of a generated one. A file that was damaged or altered gives the same message.

My Mac was lost and I have a backup

Install Remem on the new Mac, create a new vault, then restore the backup into it. A This Device Only vault comes back this way with a new Secret Key and Emergency Kit.

Can I use Time Machine instead?

Restoring a vault from a Time Machine copy of its data folder is not a tested path. Use an encrypted backup.

I want a file other apps can read

That is an export, not a backup; see Export your data.

Was this missing something? Write to hello@remempass.org.