Most families in India find out the hard way how much lives in one person’s head: which insurer covers the house, which bank the home loan is with, where the property papers are, what the PIN of the old savings account was. If that person is in hospital or no longer here, everyone else starts from nothing.
Emergency access solves this without handing over your master password. You name a trusted person in advance. They can ask for access when it is needed. If you do not say no within a waiting period you choose, they get a read-only view of your vault. This guide explains how it works in OnlyWallet and how to set it up well.
How emergency access works
The design follows the model popularised by password managers such as Bitwarden, and it keeps OnlyWallet zero-knowledge throughout.
- You invite a contact. Your device seals a copy of your vault key to their account’s public key. Only their device can open it, and the server cannot.
- They accept. Nothing is visible to them yet. The sealed key is stored separately and released only after approval.
- They request access when it is needed. You are notified, and your Home screen shows a banner with a countdown.
- The waiting period runs. You can reject the request, or approve it early.
- If you do not reject it in time, access is granted, and they can open a read-only copy of your personal vault.
The waiting period is the safety net. If the request is a mistake, or someone else has taken over your contact’s account, you have time to stop it.
What your contact can and cannot see
| Your contact can | Your contact cannot |
|---|---|
| Open your whole personal vault, read-only | Edit, delete or add anything |
| See documents, payments, insurance and logins with their details | Open attachments stored in your Google Drive |
| Keep reading while the grant exists | See your shared family or group spaces |
Be clear about one thing: once access is granted, your contact can read the vault and could copy what they see. Removing them later stops new reads, not copies already made. Choose someone you would trust with your bank locker key.
Choosing your contact and waiting period
Pick one or two people who would actually handle things: a spouse, a sibling, an adult child, a close friend. They should be comfortable using a phone app.
Pick a waiting period that matches how quickly you would notice a request. OnlyWallet offers 1, 3, 7, 14 or 30 days.
- 1 or 3 days for a spouse you live with, where speed matters more than caution.
- 7 days is a sensible default for most people.
- 14 or 30 days for someone you trust but who is not close at hand, or if you travel and may miss notifications.
Remember that an unreachable owner cannot stop a request. That is the purpose of the feature, so set the wait with that in mind.
Compare the fingerprint
When you add a contact, OnlyWallet shows their sharing fingerprint: six groups of four characters, such as A1B2 C3D4 E5F6 0718 293A 4B5C. Your contact can see their own fingerprint in Settings, under Shared vaults.
Compare the two in person or over a phone or video call, not over chat or email. If they match, tick The fingerprint matches. This step proves that the key your device is about to seal to really belongs to your contact, and not to someone who has tampered with the directory. Skipping it is the one way to undermine the whole design.
Step by step: set it up
Both of you need OnlyWallet. It is free in the web app.
- Ask your contact to sign in once with their Google account and create their own vault. This creates their sharing key.
- Open Settings, then Emergency access.
- Tap Add a trusted contact and enter their email address.
- Compare the fingerprint with them and tick The fingerprint matches.
- Choose the waiting period and send the invitation.
- Your contact opens Settings, then Emergency access, finds your name under Granted to me and taps Accept.
That is all. Nothing changes for either of you until a request is made. Changing your master password later does not break the grant.
When a request comes in
If your contact taps Request access:
- You get a notification, and your Home screen shows a banner saying when access opens, for example “Access opens in 6 days unless they reject”.
- To stop it, tap Reject. You can later choose Allow requests again if it was a misunderstanding.
- If you are fine with it, tap Approve now to skip the wait.
- If you do nothing, access opens when the waiting period ends.
On their side, once access is granted, your contact taps Open vault to see the read-only view.
How to revoke access
You stay in control the whole time:
- Reject a pending request, or reject a grant that has already been approved to cut it off.
- Remove contact to delete the grant and the sealed copy of your key together.
- Your contact can also choose Leave if they no longer want the role.
Review your emergency contacts once a year, and after big life events such as a marriage or separation.
Make the vault worth inheriting
Emergency access is only as useful as what is in the vault. A few additions make a big difference:
- Insurance policies with policy numbers, insurer helplines and nominee details.
- Loans and EMIs with lender, account number and due dates. See the features page for payments and EMI tracking.
- Bank accounts with branch, IFSC, customer ID and nominee.
- Property papers such as sale deeds and rent agreements.
- A secure note with anything else: where the will is, who the family CA is, which locker key opens what.
Since attachments are not part of emergency access, type key details into the fields, not only into scanned files. For documents the whole family uses day to day, a shared family space is the better tool; read about family sharing.
Try it free
OnlyWallet is free, with no plans or trials. Open the web app, add your important documents and set up a trusted contact today. Learn more on the emergency access page, or follow every step in the user guide.