# Nova Account & recovery

Nova Accounts, PIN and Face Unlock, power, Locate, lost mode, backups and admin tools.

## The Nova Account

Phones have no owner: buying or opening one never registers it to a character. Instead, the **Nova Account** signed in on a phone manages it. Players create or sign in to one during the phone's first setup, or later in Settings → Nova Account.

| A Nova Account gives | Without one |
| --- | --- |
| Contacts, messages, calls, mail and the Music library on every phone signed in to it | That data stays on the phone, and erasing the phone deletes it |
| A Nova Mail address, such as `sam@nova.mail` | Mail uses the number's address |
| Locate, lost mode and remote erase | Not available |
| Nova Cloud backups and phone-to-phone transfer | Not available |
| Ownership of NovaBuds and speakers | They can be paired by any phone |

Signing in merges what the phone kept on its own into the account. Accounts are not tied to a character or a number: anyone who knows the email and password can sign in on any phone. Wolfden Phone Secure never takes a Nova Account.

A phone holds one Nova Account, and signing it out needs the account's password. Changing the password signs every other phone out of the account.

## PIN and Face Unlock

Players set a phone PIN during first setup, or later in Settings → **Security**. The server checks the PIN, so it cannot be bypassed on the phone: until it is entered, the server refuses everything except what the lock screen offers. Five wrong PINs lock the keypad for 60 seconds.

**Face Unlock** is on Wolfden Phone and Wolfden Phone Pro; Wolfden Phone Secure has none. Once a phone has a PIN, choose **Set Up Face Unlock** in Settings → Security to enrol the character holding it, and optionally **Set Up an Alternate Appearance** for a second character. The phone then unlocks when an enrolled character looks at it.

- A mask blocks Face Unlock.
- The PIN is needed once after the phone turns on, after a restart of `wd_phone`, and after five failed scans in a row.
- Faces stay on the server. They are never in backups or transfers, and changing or removing the PIN, or erasing the phone, deletes them.

**Hold up to someone.** The holder of a locked phone can hold it up to the player in front of them, with the ox_target option on that player or **Hold up to someone** on the lock screen's keypad. That player chooses to look or turn away; no answer within 8 seconds counts as turning away. The phone unlocks only if their face is enrolled and they stand close and face it. An unconscious or dead player is not asked and it fails, unless the phone's **Require Attention for Face Unlock** setting is off.

Change the rules in `Config.FaceId` in `config/face_id.lua`:

| Setting | Default | What it does |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `enabled` | `true` | Face Unlock on or off |
| `maxFaces` | `2` | The main face and one alternate appearance |
| `maskBlocks` | `true` | A mask blocks a scan |
| `maxFailures` | `5` | Failed scans in a row before the PIN is needed |
| `pinAfterPowerOn` | `true` | The first unlock after the phone turns on needs the PIN |
| `hold.enabled` / `hold.distance` | `true` / `1.2` | Holding a phone up to someone's face, and how close they must stand in metres |

Set `faceId = false` on a model in `Config.PhoneModels` (`config/devices.lua`) to remove Face Unlock from it.

## Power off and on

Press and hold the side button on the phone's frame, then **slide to power off**. To turn it back on, press and hold the side button again on its off screen.

While a phone is off:

- It does not ring. Callers hear that it is unavailable, and it shows as a missed call.
- It plays no music, leaves the Radio app's frequency, and turns its flashlight off.
- It shows as offline in Locate, reports no location and cannot play a sound.
- It still charges, but stays off until the player turns it on. A phone with an empty battery asks for power first.

Turning it off locks it. The first unlock after turning it on needs the PIN, not Face Unlock, and SIMs with a SIM PIN ask for it again.

A phone that ran out of battery is different: it turns back on by itself once charged to 3%; see [Batteries](#/docs/wd_phone/accessories?section=batteries).

## Find a phone

Open **Locate** on another phone signed in to the same Nova Account. It lists the account's phones, NovaBuds and speakers with their battery and last-seen location. Players can:

- **Play a sound** on a phone, heard by players near whoever carries it, even with the phone closed.
- **Show it on the map** in Maps.
- **Mark it lost**, report it stolen, or erase it.

A phone dropped on the ground stays in Locate with its live position while its battery lasts. A phone that is turned off reports no location. Location is last-seen information, not a guarantee of a live position. Players can stop a phone reporting its location under **Settings → Security → Locate**.

## Lost and stolen phones

From Locate, a phone can be marked **lost**, with a message and contact number, or **reported stolen**. Lost mode locks the phone to its account with **Activation Lock**:

- Anyone who opens it sees only the lost screen. Nothing else on the phone works, and its number does not ring for them.
- The lost screen asks for the Nova Account's password. The right password lifts lost mode.
- Lost mode survives an erase: an erased lost phone is still locked to the account.

Police, pawn-shop or tablet resources can read a phone's lost or stolen status with the `GetDeviceSecurityStatus` export.

To find out who bought a SIM, on-duty police search the carriers' [Subscriber records](#/docs/wd_phone/subscriber-records). A seized Wolfden Phone Secure has no account to recover it; police get past its PIN with a timed [forensic unlock](#/docs/wd_phone/nova-secure?section=forensic-unlock).

## Create a backup

Open **Settings → Backup & Transfer** on an unlocked phone signed in to a Nova Account, then create a backup.

Backups include settings, the home screen, installed apps, Calendar, Notes, alarms, photos and the custom wallpaper. They do not include the phone PIN, SIM data or Wallet data. Messages and contacts need no backup: they belong to the account.

Each Nova Account can keep five backups, up to 512 KB each. Limits are under `Config.Operations.backups` in `config/platform.lua`.

> Backups store references to hosted photos, not a second copy of each file. Photos deleted from your media host cannot be recovered from a backup.

## Restore or transfer

To restore, sign in to the account on the new phone. Its first setup offers the account's backups; later, use **Settings → Backup & Transfer**. Restoring replaces the phone's current data.

To transfer, keep both phones in your inventory, both signed in to the same Nova Account, and choose **Transfer from another phone** on the new one. If the old phone has a PIN, enter it. Erasing the old phone afterwards is optional.

Move the SIM separately to keep the phone number.

## Erase a device

**Settings → General → Erase this phone** resets the phone in hand. It asks for the word `ERASE` (or the same word in the phone's language), the current PIN when one is set, and the Nova Account password when one is signed in. A lost phone cannot erase itself.

Locate can also erase a phone remotely. If the phone is not open, the erase waits until its next open, and a pending erase can be cancelled.

Erasing removes the phone's data, PIN and Face Unlock, signs it out of every account and returns it to first setup. The Nova Account and its data are not touched, and photos already sent to other players keep working.

## Help a player as an administrator

Staff with the phone admin permission can look up phones, clear PINs and lockouts, set lost mode, battery and power, and wipe phones, in game with the `phoneadmin` admin menu or from the server console. [Admin tools](#/docs/wd_phone/admin) covers the permission, the menu and every command.

For Nova Accounts and backups:

| Command | Purpose |
| --- | --- |
| `phoneadmin account nova <email>` | Show a Nova Account and the phones it is signed in on |
| `phoneadmin accountpw nova <email> <newPassword>` | Reset a forgotten Nova Account password and clear its lockout |
| `phoneadmin backups <email>` | List a Nova Account's backups |
| `phoneadmin restore <backupId> <deviceId>` | Restore one of those backups onto a phone |

Wherever a command takes a `<deviceId>`, a player's server ID works too. Five wrong passwords lock a Nova Account for five minutes. Account rules are in `config/accounts.lua`.