If you lose both your pattern and your recovery phrase

Updated 4 November 2026 · By the FirstHour team

What happens to what's inside

Your pictures, videos, files and notes stay locked on your iPhone. Wrong tries never wipe them. But without your pattern, your PIN or your phrase, nothing can unlock them. This is how the Vault is meant to work. It's also why it protects you from other people.

Why FirstHour can't help

• We never receive your pattern, PIN or phrase. Our privacy page says so. We can't look them up, and we can't reset them.
• The key isn't ours to give. Your Vault's key is stored only in locked form, sealed by your pattern or PIN, and separately by your phrase.

Does a backup file help?

No. A backup is encrypted too, and restoring it takes your recovery phrase. If the phrase is gone, the backup can't be opened by anyone.

What you can still do

Very little, and we'd rather say so plainly.

• You could keep trying, calmly. Your pattern or PIN may come back to you. Try it at the pace the waits allow.
• You could look for the paper. Check the places you might have put it, and ask anyone who helped you set up.
• If you find the paper, use it on the Forgot screen. It needs the whole phrase, typed in full. Here's how that works.

The waits after wrong tries

The waits protect your Vault from guessing. They also mean you can't try endlessly.

• Pattern or PIN: your first 4 wrong tries bring no wait. After the 5th you wait 1 minute, then 5, 15 and 60 minutes, and 60 after each wrong try from then on.
• Recovery phrase: you get 5 free tries on the Forgot screen. Then the waits are 1, 5 and 15 minutes, and 60 each time after that.
• A whole day without a wrong try clears the count.
• Changing your iPhone's clock doesn't skip a wait.
• Wrong tries never wipe your Vault. A long wait can feel stressful, but it can't delete anything.

How to make sure it never happens

1. Write your phrase on paper, in order, when you set up your Vault.
2. Keep the paper somewhere safe, in a place you'd remember, away from your phone. Not a screenshot, and not inside the Vault.
3. Check it still works. Making a backup asks you to type your phrase, which proves your paper is right.
4. Consider a backup. It protects you if you lose your iPhone, not if you lose your phrase, because it needs the phrase too. Save the file somewhere you choose, such as the Files app, and make a new one after adding things. Here are the steps.
5. If you can still open the Vault but lost the paper, tap ••• then New recovery phrase right away, and write the new one down.

What this can't change

• It can't be undone. Once both are gone, the choice has been made for you.
• A backup is only as good as its phrase. Older backups need the phrase they were made with.

Questions