## TL;DR

If you are reluctant to enter it in the web app, use the CLI path instead.

## Steps

1. Generate the encryption passphrase once, store it in your secrets manager before creating anything, and treat it with the same care as a master key. If you are reluctant to enter it in the web app, use the CLI path instead. There is no passphrase recovery flow.

## When to use

You are seeing this: Generate the encryption passphrase once, store it in your secrets manager before creating anything, and treat it with the same care as a master key. Use this skill when you run into "Storj never stores your encryption passphrase; losing it loses the data".

## When not to use

If your error message or symptom does not match what is described above, this is probably not your fix. Search for your exact error text instead of forcing this one to fit.

## Versions

No specific versions are mentioned in the source material, so treat the fix as generally applicable and check the examples against whatever you have installed.

## Why this happens

The original report does not dig into a root cause. It documents the symptom and the fix that resolved it.