App lock, duress PINs and disguises

Lock AirWallet with a PIN, password or fingerprint, set up duress PINs that open only the wallets you pick, and make the app look like a calculator, notes, weather or a clock.

AirWallet's data is always encrypted on the device. The app lock adds a PIN or password on top, so someone who picks up your phone or computer can't open your wallets. Duress PINs and disguise looks help when someone is pressuring you, or just looking over your shoulder.

The app lock is off until you turn it on. It's in the desktop apps and the Android apps. The Chrome extension has its own password instead (see "In the Chrome extension" below), and so does AirWallet Online.

#Turn on the app lock

1. Go to Settings, then App lock: off….
2. Choose PIN (6 to 12 digits) or Password (8 characters or more), and type it twice.
3. Choose Lock after it's unused for: 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 1 hour, or Never: only when it opens.
4. On an Android phone with a fingerprint reader, keep Unlock with my fingerprint too ticked if you want it.
5. Select Turn on.

Once it's on, your wallets are encrypted with your PIN or password. While AirWallet is locked, your wallets aren't even in the app's memory.

AirWallet uses Argon2id to turn your PIN or password into a key. When you set the code, it picks the strongest setting this device can check in about a second, which makes guessing PINs one after another slow.

#Unlock with your fingerprint

On Android 11 and newer, you can unlock with your fingerprint as well as your PIN or password. Your fingerprint unlocks a key in the phone's secure keystore, and it stops working if the phone's fingerprints change. To use it again, turn it back on in Settings → App lock.

A fingerprint always opens your own wallets, never a duress PIN's (see below). Under pressure, type the duress PIN instead.

#Locking

The app locks by itself when it hasn't been used for the time you chose. To lock it straight away, select Lock now. It's in the ⋯ menu and in Settings → App lock. Locking reloads the app, so nothing of your wallets stays on screen or in memory.

#Wrong tries

After 5 wrong tries, the app makes you wait before the next one: 30 seconds at first. Each further wrong try doubles the wait, up to about two hours. The lock screen says how long is left ("Too many wrong tries: wait … s").

The app counts each try before it checks the code, so quitting and reopening it doesn't reset the count. A correct PIN or password does.

Since October 15, 2026, a phone's clock can't cause a long lockout. The wait is measured on the device's clock, and an offline phone's clock can jump back, sometimes by years, after a restart. If the wait ever ends further away than the longest wait the app sets, the app starts that wait again from now.

#If you forget your PIN or password

You can only erase this copy and restore your wallets from their recovery words or a backup.

1. On the lock screen, select Forgot it?.
2. Type ERASE.
3. Select Erase.

AirWallet then starts empty. Anything that has no other copy (no recovery words, no backup) is lost.

#Change the PIN or turn the lock off

In Settings → App lock:

• Change the PIN or password: type the current one, then the new one twice, and select Change.
• Turn it off: type the current one and select Turn off. If you have duress PINs, you can tick a box to remove them too. The wallets they open stay in your own wallet list.

#Duress PINs

A duress PIN is a second PIN you can type instead of your real one if someone forces you to open AirWallet. It opens a separate AirWallet that holds only the wallets you picked for it, say one with a little money in it. Nothing in that AirWallet, or in the saved data, shows there's more.

Duress PINs need the app lock to be on. If your lock uses a password, they're duress passwords instead.

#Add a duress PIN

1. Go to Settings → App lock, then open Duress PINs.
2. Select Add a duress PIN.
3. Give it a name. Only you see the name, here.
4. Type the duress PIN twice.
5. Under It opens, tick the wallets it should open.
6. Select Add.

You can add up to four duress PINs. The saved lock always has eight slots, whether they're used or not, so it looks the same with no duress PINs as with several.

#What a duress PIN opens

• Copies of the wallets you picked, with their keys, names and hidden tokens. They're the same wallets, so anything sent from them is really sent. Only pick wallets you could hand over.
• Your settings, so it looks like your usual AirWallet.
• Nothing else. It has none of your other wallets, contacts or history.

Changes made inside a duress PIN's AirWallet (a new wallet, its own settings) stay inside it. To change which wallets a duress PIN opens, or to remove it, select Change next to it. If you remove it, your own wallets stay, but anything made inside it goes.

#Things to know

• The fingerprint always opens your own wallets, never a duress PIN's.
• If someone turns the app lock off inside a duress PIN's AirWallet, that AirWallet then opens without asking. To get back to your own wallets, turn the lock on there with any PIN, lock it, and type your real PIN.
• There's no "wipe" PIN. That was a deliberate choice, because a wipe PIN is too easy to trigger by mistake.
• What it hides, and from whom: a duress PIN hides your other PINs from whoever uses the app. It doesn't hide them from an expert who examines the device's storage over time.

#Disguise looks

AirWallet can look like another app: Notes, Calculator, Weather or Clock.

1. Go to Settings, then App name & icon….
2. Pick a look.
3. Select Apply.

What changes depends on the device:

With a disguise look on, the app opens as that app. The calculator works. Notes lets you type notes (they aren't saved). Weather says it "Can't connect to the server". Clock shows the time.

To get to your wallets, tap ⋯ four times within 4 seconds. If the app lock is on, it then asks for your PIN. The disguise itself opens without the PIN, so the app looks ordinary to anyone who opens it.

While the disguise is showing, pasting or dropping keys onto it does nothing. On a Mac, the menu bar only shows ordinary menu items.

Payment notifications stay off while a disguise look is on, on every platform, because a "Payment received" notification would give the disguise away. See Notifications and token approvals.

To go back to the normal look, choose AirWallet in App name & icon….

#In the Chrome extension

The Chrome extension doesn't have the app lock, PIN or disguise looks. It uses a password instead:

• The password is on by default. It's stretched with Argon2id and protects the extension's wallet data.
• The extension locks itself after a time of no use in AirWallet's own windows: 15 minutes by default, and you can choose from 5 minutes to 4 hours, or only when Chrome closes.
• It also locks when the computer locks or sleeps. That's on by default.
• If you forget the password, the only way back is to erase the extension's data and restore from your recovery words or a backup.