How Heritkey works: passing on your passwords, step by step

25 October 2026 · 6 min read

Heritkey is an encrypted vault for the information your family will need one day: passwords, accounts, documents and personal messages. You fill it at your own pace and choose who can open it. While you're in control, nobody can open it, not your heirs and not Heritkey. Heritkey is launching soon. Here's how it will work, step by step.

Step 1: Fill your vault

Add your passwords and accounts, scan documents such as insurance policies and contracts with your camera, and write messages for the people you love. Start with your email accounts, because they unlock everything else. Large text, clear buttons and no jargon make it easy to set up together with a child or grandchild.

Step 2: Choose your heirs

Invite your children, a partner or a trusted friend. Each heir accepts the invitation on their own phone, which creates a personal key that never leaves it. You both confirm a short matching code, so nobody can slip in a different key. From then on, your heirs know the vault exists, but they can't see inside.

Step 3: Set your waiting period

Choose how long Heritkey should wait before opening the vault for an heir who asks: anywhere from 7 to 90 days. You can change the waiting period, and your heirs, at any time.

Step 4: If something happens

1. An heir taps Request access.
2. You're notified straight away.
3. If you're fine, tap Refuse. Nothing is shared, and you can remove that heir.
4. If you don't reply within your waiting period, the vault opens for your heir.

Because the vault opens when you can't respond, it also helps if you're seriously ill, not only after a death.

How the encryption works

Everything is encrypted with AES-256 on your phone before it's stored, and Heritkey never has the key, so its servers only ever hold scrambled data. For each heir, your phone seals a copy of your vault key that only that heir's phone can open. Heritkey keeps the sealed copy but can't open it; your heir could open it but doesn't have it. Heritkey hands it over only when your rule is met. Until then, neither Heritkey nor your heirs can open your vault alone.

The benefits

• Your family isn't left guessing. Accounts, documents and instructions in one place.
• Private while you're here. Nobody, including Heritkey, can read your vault.
• You stay in control. Refuse any request with one tap, and change your heirs whenever you like.
• Easy to keep current. Unlike a paper list or a will, you can update it in minutes.
• Personal messages, delivered only when the time comes.

What Heritkey isn't

Heritkey doesn't replace a will. It helps your family find and access your accounts and information, while your will and your lawyer or notary still handle your estate. It's also a map, not a way to log in as someone who has died: banks and other organizations have their own bereavement processes, and your executor should use them. For why passwords don't belong in a will, see Should you put your passwords in your will?

Pricing

$3.99 a month, or $74.99 once for lifetime access. People on the waitlist get the launch price.