The duress pattern

The duress pattern is a second pattern for an emergency. When you draw it, DotSafe erases every vault on the device. Then it opens an empty vault, as if nothing happened.

Set a duress pattern

1. Open any vault, then open Settings.
2. Tap App. Under Privacy, tap Duress pattern. DotSafe asks for Face ID, Touch ID or your device passcode. This stops another person from changing it.
3. Draw the duress pattern. It must be different from all of your vault patterns.
4. Draw it again to confirm.

The duress pattern is available on Free and on Pro.

What happens when you draw it

1. DotSafe writes random data over the index of every vault on the device. Without the index, no vault on the device can be opened.
2. It erases the local keys that the app keeps in the Keychain on this device.
3. It opens a new empty vault. The screen looks the same as when you open any new vault. Nothing that you add to this vault is kept after it locks.
4. Later, in small steps, it deletes the encrypted blocks that no vault uses now.

What it does not erase

• Your iCloud copies. The erase is on this device only. Vaults with sync on stay in iCloud. To get one back, draw its pattern on any of your devices.
• Your other devices. Each device has its own copy. A device that has sync on keeps its vaults.
• The salt in iCloud Keychain. DotSafe keeps it, so your patterns still make the same keys and can restore your vaults.

Choose the pattern well

• Make it easy to draw under stress, but not easy to draw by accident.
• Do not make it a small change of a real pattern. A mistake when you open a real vault must not erase everything.
• Decide in advance when you will use it, and when you will open a decoy vault.

How it stays hidden

DotSafe keeps only a one-way tag of the duress pattern in the Keychain, never the pattern itself. The tag exists even when you have not set a duress pattern: then it holds random data. Thus the Keychain does not show whether a duress pattern is set.