Using Bequest

Claiming a vault left to you

If someone has left you a Bequest vault, you'll be able to open it only after the vault has expired — that is, after its owner has stopped checking in for long enough. Until then there's nothing to see, and depending on how you were set up, you may not even know a vault is waiting.

How you reach it depends on how the owner added you:

• You got an email with a claim link. Open the link and sign in — you'll set up an Internet Identity if you don't already have one (it's free and takes a minute). Your code is then redeemed for you.
• You were given a passphrase — in a will, by a lawyer, or from a safe. Go to the Shared page, sign in, type the passphrase into Redeem Code or Passphrase, and click Redeem. The check involves some deliberate, memory-hard work and a short anti-front-running wait, and it's tried across every version of the service, so it can take a minute or two. Keep the tab open until it finishes.
• The owner tied the vault to your identity (your principal). Just sign in with that identity and the vault is already there — no code needed.

Once you're recognized, the vault appears under Expired Vaults Shared With You. Select it to see the files and download what you need — each one is decrypted in your own browser as it arrives.

A few things to know:

• You'll need an Internet Identity (or other Internet Computer identity) to claim, even if you were invited by email. New to it? See How to create an Internet Identity.
• Download everything while you're here. Opening the vault derives a one-time key that unlocks your files, and the owner has pre-paid your first unlock — so claiming and downloading costs you nothing. If you leave and come back later, though, unlocking again means paying for a fresh derivation yourself. It's a small fee, about $0.04, but it's simplest to save all the files you want in one sitting.
• If the owner made you a backup, the vault becomes available to you only after your waiting period — and only if no one else claimed it first.

For vault owners

Signing in

Bequest signs you in with Internet Identity — there's no email-and-password to create or forget. Your identity is your account: sign in with the same one each time and your vaults are waiting; sign in with a different one and you get a fresh, empty account.

So the one thing to get right is using the same Internet Identity every time. If you ever land on an empty dashboard you didn't expect, you've almost certainly signed in with the wrong identity — log out and try again.

New to Internet Identity? It's a passwordless sign-in built into the Internet Computer, and it takes a minute to set up — see How to create an Internet Identity. Be sure to set up recovery when you do. If you lose your only Internet Identity, you lose access to the accounts created with it — including your Bequest vaults. With no way to check in, they would eventually expire and be released to your recipients.

Credits

Everything you do in Bequest — creating a vault, uploading a file, checking in — runs on the Internet Computer, which charges a small amount for the work. Credits, bought up front, cover that cost. Every action shows its price beside the button, so you always know what you're spending before you commit. Charging per action might look like nickel-and-diming, but it's the fairest way to bill for the service — you pay only for what you use, and it works out far cheaper than a monthly or annual subscription. To estimate the setup and yearly cost for a vault of your own, try the cost calculator at the bottom of this page.

Credits also pay for your recipients. When the time comes to claim a vault, the work of handing over the keys and files is drawn from what you've already pre-funded — so a recipient never needs an account, a wallet, or money of their own to receive what you left them.

To add credits, open Account (the Manage Credits link in the balance bar on your dashboard):

• Buy Credits — pay with ICP from the wallet you signed in with. The page has instructions for transferring ICP in from an exchange if you need to.
• Buy Credits with an External Wallet — pay with ICP from a separate wallet.
• Redeem a code — if you were invited or given a promo code, enter it here for free credits.

Balances and prices are shown in XDR. The XDR is the International Monetary Fund's unit of account, set from a basket of major world currencies — the US dollar, euro, yen, pound, and yuan — and is currently worth a little over one US dollar. Pricing in XDR rather than in a crypto token keeps what you see stable instead of swinging around with token prices.

Two notes worth knowing. If a request fails, its credits aren't refunded — this keeps pricing predictable and deters spam, and the amounts involved are tiny. And credits can't be withdrawn once added; they're committed to the service on deposit — though you can top up in amounts as small as .5 XDR at a time.

Creating a vault

From your dashboard, fill in the Create Vault form:

• Vault name — a label for the vault. It appears in the subject line of the email your recipients receive, so make it something they'll recognize. It stays encrypted until the vault opens, so it's secret until then.
• Check-in interval — how long you can go between check-ins before the vault expires. Choose something you'll comfortably keep up with; you can change it later.

The price is shown beside the Create button and updates as you adjust the settings. Click Create, and the vault appears under Your Vaults.

The first time you create a vault in a given browser, Bequest also sets up an encryption key on your device so it can show your own file names and recipient details back to you. This is automatic and happens only once per browser — its cost is folded into that first vault.

You can keep up to 50 vaults, so it's fine to set up separate ones for different people or purposes.

Adding files

Open a vault from your dashboard to manage its contents.

1. Choose a file.
2. Click Encrypt & Upload.

The file is encrypted in your browser before any of it leaves your device, and its name is encrypted too — Bequest only ever receives the encrypted version. The cost (based on the file's size and how long it's stored) is shown beside the button. Uploaded files appear in the vault's file list, where you can download or delete them.

Already encrypted it yourself? If you used the offline bequest-prepare tool to encrypt a file on your own machine, choose Upload Pre-Encrypted File instead: pick the encrypted file, give it a name, and upload. This is for people who'd rather their files never pass through a browser unencrypted at all.

For the security-conscious. For the strongest protection — including against future quantum attackers — encrypt your files with your own symmetric passphrase first and share that passphrase with your recipients out-of-band, such as in your will. Bequest's time-lock still applies on top, so the files stay out of reach until the vault opens even for someone who already holds your passphrase. See Looking ahead: quantum for why this might be a concern.

Adding recipients

Recipients are the people a vault opens to. You manage them in the Recipients section of a vault — recipient details are encrypted too.

For each recipient you choose how they'll prove they're the right person when the time comes. Pick at least one:

• Email — the simplest. When the vault opens, Bequest emails them a private link to claim. Good for less technical people, or for someone you don't want to tell in advance that they're a recipient. Note that email is inherently insecure, so there's always a risk that someone else intercepts the code before your intended recipient and claims the vault in their place.
• Principal — their Internet Computer identity. A principal is the unique identifier for any account on the Internet Computer, which your recipient can get from Internet Identity or another compatible wallet. Tie the vault to their principal and they claim simply by signing in with that identity.
• Passphrase — a secret you choose and give them yourself, through a will, a lawyer, or a safe. Whoever holds it can claim. It's never stored in readable form and can't be shown again, so record it somewhere safe before you leave the form.

You can pair an email with either a principal or a passphrase. They'll then get a notification that the vault is ready to claim, while still authenticating out-of-band for security. Without an email, they'll need to learn some other way that it's time to come and claim the vault.

Optional touches:

• Nickname — a label so you can tell recipients apart; only you ever see it.
• Message — after adding an email recipient, you can attach a short personal note that comes in their notification email.

Backup recipients (delays). Each recipient has a delay — how long after the vault opens they must wait before they can claim. Zero means they can claim the moment it opens; a longer delay holds someone back as a backup. (Every vault needs at least one zero-delay recipient, so someone can always claim the moment it opens.)

The rule that makes backups work is about timing. When the vault opens, recipients become able to claim as their delays pass — first the zero-delay recipients, then later ones as their waiting periods elapse. But the first time anyone claims, the line is drawn: everyone whose wait has already passed keeps their access, and everyone still waiting is shut out for good.

So a recipient with a long delay only ever gets in if no one claimed before their wait was up. For example: give your partner no delay and your lawyer a 90-day delay. If your partner claims, the lawyer never gains access. If 90 days pass with no claim, the lawyer's window opens and they can step in.

Want two people to each have access regardless of whether the other claims? Give them the same delay. Because their waiting periods end together, one claiming never shuts out the other — they're both already eligible.

Instructions packet to download a printable page explaining how to claim — where the vault lives and what to do. You can give it to them in advance, or keep it with your important papers to be found later. In either case, even if someone discovers it before you stop checking in, they can't access the files, so it's much safer than just leaving the raw documents around.

Checking in

A check-in is how you tell Bequest you're still here. It's a deliberate action — nothing else, not even signing in, counts — and each one resets that vault's clock to a fresh full interval.

• On your dashboard, every vault has a Check In button, and Check In All checks in all of them at once.
• Inside a vault, its own Check In button does the same for that one vault.

The cost is shown beside the button: a check-in renews the vault's storage for another interval, along with a small flat fee. You only pay for the storage time that is used up, that is, if you check in more often or less frequently, you pay the same total storage cost regardless.

If a vault expires. Missing a check-in isn't necessarily the end. As long as an expired vault is still within its retention window, open it and use Recover Vault (Check In) to reactivate it and restart the clock. One caveat: if a recipient has already claimed, they may already hold the key to your files — reactivating brings the vault back, but can't take back access someone has already gained.

Checking in from another device. In a vault's Check-in Identity section you can link a second identity — say, one on your phone — that's allowed to check in but can't open files or change anything. It's a convenient way to keep vaults alive without using your full identity, and a useful backup if your main device isn't to hand.

Managing a vault

Open a vault to adjust how it behaves. Each change shows its cost and takes effect right away.

• Check-in interval — change how long you can go between check-ins. Shortening it tightens your deadline; lengthening it gives more breathing room.
• Retention — how long after expiry your recipients can still claim before the vault is permanently deleted. The minimum is one year; set it here if you want longer. Note that if you pay for longer retention and later shorten it, the storage you pre-paid isn't refunded — so decide up front and stick with it.
• Recipient reminders — turn this on and, if the vault expires and no one has claimed it, Bequest sends your recipients one more reminder email partway through the retention window — a nudge in case the first notification was missed. It needs enough retention left to schedule, so very short retention or long recipient delays can rule it out.
• Delete vault — removes the vault and all its files for good. This can't be undone, and there is no refund for pre-paid storage.

If you see a Migrate this vault banner, the vault lives on an earlier generation of Bequest. Migrating moves it onto the current infrastructure — files copy directly between canisters, and a refund covers the cost of the move.

Account & extras

Your Account page (reached from the dashboard) handles credits, and a few other things.

Contact email & notifications

Bequest doesn't need an email address to work, but you can save one under Contact & Notifications so we can reach you about your account. It's encrypted before it's stored, never shared, and you can remove it any time. If you'd also like occasional product news, flip the opt-in on — leave it off and we'll only contact you when it matters. This is separate from the email addresses you set on recipients, which is where vault notifications go.

Invite friends

Once you've made your first purchase, you unlock a set of invite links to share. Anyone who joins through your link gets free welcome credits to start, and you earn 10% of whatever they later buy. Open the Invite Friends tab to create a link and track which invites have been used and what you've earned.

Redeeming a code

Have an invite or promo code? Enter it under Redeem a Code for free credits.

Cost calculator

Wondering what a vault will cost? The calculators below estimate storage and upkeep from Bequest's current pricing. Adjust the inputs to model your own files and check-in schedule.