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If You Lose Your iPhone or Mac

What protects your items on a lost device

  • The device's own lock. Your items are in the Keychain, which can't be read while the device is locked. Whoever has it needs its passcode, or your Mac's login password, to get anywhere.
  • A check before every item. Even on an unlocked device, Private Passwords checks it's you before it opens an item: Face ID or Touch ID, or the passcode or Mac password where those can't be used.
  • The launch lock, if it's on, hides even your items' names. See The launch lock.
  • A guard on new faces and fingers. If someone adds their own face or finger to the device, Private Passwords locks for an hour, giving you time to erase the device.

The launch lock is on unless you turned it off.

The launch lock is off unless you turned it on. To have your Mac ask before it shows even your items' names, turn on Require Face ID / Touch ID at Launch in Settings.

One thing to know: with Touch ID, a passcode or your Mac's password, an unlock lasts for your Unlock Period, 15 minutes unless you changed it. It ends early when the device locks, as that page explains. With Face ID there's no Unlock Period: Face ID asks every time.

What to do

  1. Use Find My, from another of your Apple devices or at icloud.com/find in a browser, to mark the device as lost, and to erase it if it isn't coming back. Erasing it removes the items on it; with sync on, your other devices keep theirs.
  2. If someone may know its passcode (or your Mac's password), don't wait: erase it. Whoever knows the passcode can unlock the device, and Private Passwords accepts the passcode where Face ID or Touch ID can't be used.
  3. If you're unsure whether someone opened Private Passwords while the device was unlocked, change the passwords of your most important logins at their websites. The Important Logins page, from Credential Health, shows which of your logins are marked important. See Credential Health.
  4. If you get the device back and think someone may have seen its passcode, change the passcode (on a Mac, its login password).

Getting your items back

How depends on the choice you made on the Welcome when you first set the app up.

Your items synced through iCloud Keychain

Sign the new device in to the same Apple Account, with iCloud Keychain on, and install Private Passwords. On the Welcome, choose Sync via iCloud Keychain, then Yes, on another device. Your items, templates and tags arrive from iCloud Keychain. See Moving to a New iPhone or Mac.

Your items were kept on the device only, and you have a backup

Install Private Passwords on the new device and restore your backup with its recovery key. Anything you added or changed after that backup was made is missing, so check your newest logins. See Making and Restoring a Backup.

No sync and no backup

Your items can't be brought back. Pebble IT has no copy of them: there's no server and no account. Use each website's own "forgotten password" steps to get back into your logins, and save them again in Private Passwords on the new device. Then decide how to keep them safe next time: sync, a backup, or both. See Why Back Up?.

Continue to Frequently Asked Questions.