How to Restore a Monero Wallet from a Seed Phrase

How to restore a Monero wallet from a seed phrase

A Monero recovery phrase is the only backup you need. Here is how to restore an XMR wallet from 16 words (Polyseed) or 25 words (legacy seed) — and what to do when the phrase is rejected.

What a Monero recovery phrase actually is

A Monero wallet is just a number — a 256-bit private key. Everything else (your addresses, your balance, your history) is derived from it. A recovery phrase (also called a seed phrase or mnemonic) is that number written as words so a human can back it up on paper. Restoring a wallet means feeding those words back into a wallet application, which re-derives the same keys and finds the same coins on the blockchain.

Monero wallets use two phrase formats today: the classic 25-word seed and the newer 16-word Polyseed. Both encode the same kind of secret, and Feather Wallet for Monero (XMR) accepts either one when you restore.

Before you start

Have the phrase written down exactly — same words, same order, same spelling (Monero wordlists only contain English words).
Use a trusted wallet: the Feather web wallet in your browser or the desktop app.
Never restore into a wallet you do not control, and never type the phrase into a chat, e-mail or “support” form. Real support staff never ask for it.

Step-by-step: restoring in the browser

Open Feather Web and choose “Restore wallet from seed”.
Paste or type the recovery phrase — 16 words (Polyseed) or 25 words (legacy). Spacing and letter case do not matter.
Press “Check phrase”. The wallet validates the words against the Monero wordlist and the built-in checksum, and shows the address the phrase derives. If a word is mistyped or out of order, the check fails — this happens before any balance is touched.
Press “Restore wallet”. The wallet derives your keys locally and synchronizes with the Monero network. Synchronization is what makes your balance and history appear; on a fresh node it can take a few minutes.
Open Receive to confirm your address matches the one you used before. If it does, the restore was successful.

Common reasons a phrase is rejected

Checksum mismatch

Both phrase formats carry a checksum word (or checksum bits). A single wrong letter breaks it. Re-read the backup and compare word by word — the mistake is usually a swapped word, not a missing one.

Wrong wordlist

Monero's legacy list has 1626 words, Polyseed uses 2048. If the wallet says a word is not in the list, you are probably looking at a phrase from a different coin or a mis-transcribed word such as “bought” vs “brought”.

Wrong word count

16 and 25 are the only valid lengths. If you have 12 or 24 words, that is a BIP39 phrase from another wallet (Bitcoin, Ethereum), not a Monero seed.

Order matters

Re-ordering words destroys the key. A phrase is a sequence, not a set.

Restoring in the desktop wallet

The desktop app follows the same logic: Restore wallet from seed, paste the phrase, pick a wallet name and password, then let it sync. On the official command line the equivalent command is monero-wallet-cli --restore-deterministic-wallet.

Security rules after a restore

The phrase is the wallet. Anyone who reads it owns your coins — store it on paper, offline, in two separate places.
If you suspect the phrase leaked, move the funds to a freshly created wallet immediately; a compromised seed cannot be “re-secured”.
Prefer restoring on a machine you control, and keep the system clean — malware that reads the clipboard is the most common way phrases leak.

Feather: A Free Monero Wallet — Desktop & Web