Restore a shared book

Rebuild a shared book on this device straight from the sync service, without anyone having to send you an invite. This is the disaster path: it exists for the day the device that owned a shared book is gone.

When to use this

Use it when you owned a shared book and lost the device you owned it on, and you have your owner recovery code.

Not this screen if:

Someone is sharing their book with you. That's Join a shared book — you need their invite link, not a recovery code.
You're restoring a normal backup. That's More → Backup, or the restore option on the welcome screen.
The book still opens on another of your devices. Nothing is lost — invite this device from that one, which is quicker and needs no code.

What you need

Three things, and there's no way around any of them:

A name for the book on this device. Yours alone.
The owner recovery phrase you generated in Manage devices → Owner access — the 24 words, in order.
The book password — the shared password the book has always used.

The phrase proves you're the owner. The book password decrypts the contents. They're different things and you need both.

Older amrec… codes still work here: paste one instead of the phrase and you'll be asked for its passphrase as well.

How it works

The app reconstructs your owner identity from the recovery code, registers this device with the sync service, downloads the book's encrypted snapshot and rebuilds it locally. When it finishes, the book opens and syncs as before.

This device becomes a new owner device. The old one is still listed under Manage devices — revoke it there once you're back in, especially if it was lost rather than broken.

If it fails

"That phrase or code did not open." A word is mistyped, missing, or two are swapped — the order counts. The words are checked against a fixed list, so the app can tell a typo from a wrong phrase.
"Wrong book password." The code was accepted — this is the other password, the one the book itself uses.
"This book has no backup on the relay yet." The book had never synced enough to leave a snapshot behind. It can't be rebuilt this way; use a file backup if you have one.
"This recovery code is for a different book." Codes are per-book. Find the right one.

Tips

The sync service address is filled in for you, under Advanced. Only change it if the book used a relay you host yourself.
A failed attempt leaves nothing behind, so you can fix the phrase or password and try again under the same name.
Restoring doesn't remove the lost device's access — revoke it afterwards, then change the book password.
If you're reading this and haven't lost anything yet: go to Manage devices, generate a recovery code, and make a second device an owner. Both are impossible to do afterwards.