What it is

The recovery kit is a short code made of letters and numbers. The code is your vault key itself, written down, so it opens your vault with no passphrase at all. That is what makes it useful, and it is also why it has to be treated like the key to your house.

The kit is three lines: a line saying which format it is, the email of the account it belongs to, and the key as fourteen short groups. It stays valid forever, including after you change your vault passphrase, because the key inside it never changes. See how encryption works for why.

The recovery kit screen. A heading reading Save your recovery kit, a small gold tag under it reading RELIC KEEPS NO COPY, STORE IT OFFLINE, then a recessed box headed RECOVERY KIT holding the kit in monospace: a relic-mk-v1 line, an email line, and rows of four-character groups. Under the box are a Copy button and a Download button. The kit screen. The groups here are blanked out; a real kit shows fourteen groups of four characters.

When you get it

Relic shows the kit once, right after you create your vault (see your first run), on a screen headed Save your recovery kit. Under the heading is a tag that reads RELIC KEEPS NO COPY · STORE IT OFFLINE, and under that:

The Continue button stays switched off until you have actually downloaded the file. Until then the screen says Download the kit to continue. That gate is deliberate, because a kit you skipped is the same as no kit. There is also a Copy button on the kit box if you would rather paste it straight into a password manager.

The downloaded file is called relic-recovery-kit.txt. Its first line is the warning, so the file still explains itself years later:

Where to keep it

The app's own advice is the right advice: print it or store it in a password manager. In practice that means:

A password manager, as a secure note. This is the easiest one to still have in three years.
Printed on paper, in the drawer or the safe where you keep other documents you would not want to lose.
On a USB stick that lives somewhere other than next to your computer.

Places to avoid:

An email to yourself. Anyone who gets into your mail gets into your vault.
A plain text file on the desktop of the computer you are protecting.
A chat message, a photo of the screen on your phone camera roll, or a shared cloud folder.

Anyone holding the kit can read your vault without knowing anything else about you. Relic keeps no copy of it, so nobody can take it away from someone who has it.

Seeing it again

As long as one device is unlocked you can show the kit whenever you want. Go to Settings › Sync and account › Security and open Show recovery kit, described in the app as Your way back in if you forget your vault passphrase. The same screen comes up, with Copy and Download, and this time Continue is not gated.

It is the same kit every time. Showing it again does not make a new one and does not invalidate the copy you already saved. On a phone the Security screen is in the settings sheet; the desktop path is Settings›Sync and account›Security.

Using it to get back in

If you have forgotten your vault passphrase, the kit is how you get in. It also sets a new passphrase on the way through, so you end up with a vault you can open normally again.

Sign in as usual
Open Relic and sign in to your account with your email and account password. That is a separate secret and it can be reset by email if you have forgotten it too.
Choose I lost my vault passphrase
On the Unlock your vault screen, pick the door that reads I lost my vault passphrase, with the line Use your recovery kit.
Paste the kit
The screen is headed Use your recovery kit and says Paste the kit you saved, then set a new vault passphrase. Paste the whole thing into the Recovery kit box, including the first line. Spaces, line breaks and lower case are all forgiven, and a mistyped kit is caught rather than quietly opening the wrong thing.
Set a new vault passphrase
Fill in New vault passphrase and Repeat the vault passphrase, then press Unlock. Your items open, and the new passphrase is the one you use from then on. Your kit still works.

If another of your devices is still unlocked, you have an easier option: unlock the new one from that one instead, with Use another device (see add a device), and change the passphrase afterwards from Security.

If you lose both

If you forget your vault passphrase and you no longer have your recovery kit, your data is gone. There is no support request that recovers it. A service that could reset your key could also read your vault, so Relic does not have one.

This is worth acting on today rather than reading and moving past. Open Security, show your kit, and put a copy somewhere you will still be able to find it. If your worry is a lost or stolen device rather than a forgotten passphrase, see sign out everywhere instead.