I lost my encryption key — can I get it back?

No. Dotvault stores your key securely in the macOS Keychain, but we deliberately never show it again after you first save it.

If you still have access to the file through Dotvault — meaning the key is still in your keychain — use Rotate key to generate a new one and save it somewhere sensible this time. If you’ve lost both Dotvault’s keychain entry and any external copy of the key, the file is unrecoverable. That’s how encryption is supposed to work.