Forgot password but have Touch ID login

[bmwrangle]

Hi. I’ve been using Touch ID to login on my phone for so long that I’ve forgotten my master password. Do I have any options to get my database on a known login password?

[wgray]

Hi @bmwrangle,

Thanks for using Codebook, though I’m really sorry to hear about the trouble. Forgetting the Codebook master password is a tough spot to be in, as there are no backdoors and we cannot recover it for you. Despite the password being encrypted in your device’s Secure Enclave, Codebook does not currently offer a feature for displaying or recovering that value, it simply puts it there and then uses it on login when you authenticate with a fingerprint. We are currently considering ways to improve this, but right now that’s the situation. We have some other suggestions that might help, though:

Forgotten Master Passwords

What do I do if I forgot my master password? When you first setup Codebook on your computer or mobile device and set a master password it is used to create a key that we then use to encrypt your local data. We don’t store this key anywhere (e.g. outside your app or on some cloud service) and we cannot retrieve it if you forget the master password. Adding a backdoor to Codebook or keeping a copy of your key would seriously compromise the application’s security, so it’s important to set a master p…

[wgray]

Follow-up: we’re working on some changes now to help recover a master password that’s been forgotten but is still stored in the Secure Enclave, protected by Touch ID. If you’d like to beta test our changes, please send me a direct message here on discuss with the email address to use, or send us an email at support@zetetic.net. This way we can confirm it works and get your password back for you. Thanks!

[wgray]

Note: this post is about Codebook for iOS, not Android.

Update: The last comment I left here seems to have lead to some confusion, so a little clarification is in order:

If you have forgotten your master password, but you can still log into Codebook for iOS with Touch ID, you can retrieve your master password after logging in and going to Settings (see below).

If you have forgotten your master password and Touch ID login is not working, we don’t have any way to retrieve your master password.

Because Touch ID login is so convenient, and because people tend to both choose a strong master password when setting up Codebook and to enable Touch ID, it’s possible to set and forget the master password. To help people who realize they’ve forgotten the password and can still login via Touch ID, we implemented a Retrieve password function on the Login Settings. We’ll also be adding a local notification to remind users who haven’t used their password in a while to look it up if they’ve forgotten it.

After logging in with Touch ID, you can retrieve your password by going to More > Settings > Login Settings and tapping the “Retrieve password” button: