Account Fingerprint Phrase
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Are you looking to unlock your vault with a fingerprint reader? If so, check out this article instead.
Each Bitwarden account has a "fingerprint phrase" associated with it. Your account's fingerprint phrase is permanent and composed of five random english words that appear in a specific order, for example:
alligator-transfer-laziness-macaroni-blue
Your fingerprint phrase is an important security feature that helps securely identify a Bitwarden user when encryption-related operations, like sharing credentials, are performed. Some Bitwarden procedures, like adding a new user to an organization, will ask you to verify that the fingerprint phrase matches your own or another user's.
Verify your fingerprint during relevant operations using a secondary form of communication such as phone or messaging.
Validating fingerprint phrases ensures that end-to-end encryption is securely initiated and that the Bitwarden server you are communicating with has not been maliciously tampered with.
You can find your account's fingerprint phrase from any Bitwarden client application:
Web vault: Account Settings → My Account
Desktop apps: Account → Fingerprint Phrase
Browser extensions: Settings → Account → Fingerprint Phrase
Mobile apps: Settings → Account → Fingerprint Phrase
CLI: Using the command
bw get fingerprint me
Not knowing your fingerprint phrase will never result in you being locked out of your vault, so it's not critical to write down or store your fingerprint phrase in a secure location, however some users may choose to do so.
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Recovery codes, on the other hand, are used for two-step login and should always be stored outside of Bitwarden in a way that makes sense for you. This will ensure that you are not locked out of your account in the event that you lose your two-step login secondary device.
While you can't change your current account's fingerprint phrase, you can delete the account and start a new one to generate a new phrase.
Our fingerprint phrases are generated from the Electronic Frontier Foundation's long word list, which has been "manually checked and [the EFF has] attempted to remove as many profane, insulting, sensitive, or emotionally-charged words as possible".