Moving your vault to a new iPhone
Hedgehog Bits stays out of iCloud and phone-to-phone transfer on purpose. Here is how to move your vault yourself with an encrypted backup file.
A new iPhone usually copies everything across on its own. Hedgehog Bits is an exception, by design: the vault is left out of iCloud backups, computer backups and Quick Start transfer. That way, a copy of your vault only exists where you put one.
Moving it takes a couple of minutes.
On your old iPhone
- Open the vault.
- Go to Settings → Export Backup…
- Save the
.hhbitsfile somewhere you can reach from the new phone: AirDrop it to your Mac, save it to Files, or copy it to a USB drive.
Keep the app open until the export finishes. If the app locks during an export, the export is cancelled, so the key is never kept in the background.
On your new iPhone
- Install Hedgehog Bits.
- On the first screen, tap Restore from Backup…
- Choose the backup file and enter the vault password.
Your folders, files and password come back exactly as they were. From then on, type your password where the app asks for your name.
What makes the backup safe
The backup is the vault’s own ciphertext, packed into a single file. It is never decrypted or re-encrypted along the way, so it is as strong as the vault itself.
- It opens only with your password.
- It can’t be quietly modified. An HMAC keyed from your master key covers every entry. If anything is changed, removed, swapped or added, the restore is refused.
- Restore is all-or-nothing. The password is checked before anything is written. The data is unpacked into a staging area, verified, flushed to disk and only then moved into place. A damaged file or an interrupted restore can’t leave you with half a vault.
Things to keep in mind
- A backup is a snapshot. It contains what was in the vault when you exported it. Export again after adding important files.
- It reveals size, not content. Someone with the file can see roughly how big the vault is and how many items it holds, but nothing inside it.
- Where you keep it is your choice. A USB drive in a drawer, an encrypted disk, or a cloud folder you already trust. Each has trade-offs, and you are best placed to judge them.
- Make one before you need it. If your phone is lost or erased and you have no backup, the vault is gone too.
A regular backup is the simplest way to own your data without depending on anyone else’s infrastructure.